Kory’s First Blog Entry

So far the material in this class has come off as sort of sporadic to me. We’ve covered topics which almost seem fringe (cyber ethics) but also covered topics which hit very close to home, mostly referring to intellectual property. I would guess that most of the class will be able to relate to the material about intellectual property. I’d bet a fair number of us are younger, early twenties and have faced a lot of ethical decisions when it comes to how we obtain music, videos, etc. Well, I definitely find this area of the material to be not necessarily the most interesting but certainly the easiest to discuss simply because it’s had such a strong presence in my life.

When it comes to this week’s reading material, I found myself relating the text to how I've dealt with intellectual property over the years. When I was in high school seven years ago I felt no ethical qualms whatsoever against downloading anything. I recall showing a movie in French class before it was released in theaters. I didn't pay for anything, games, movies, music; no chance. Well, fast forward to the present and I’d say I've matured somewhat in that I feel that purchasing these things is more situational. I mentioned in a discussion post that I don’t feel it is necessary to purchase music that is decades old, but new emerging artists need the credit and income. I think whole idea is more complex than just right and wrong.

Tavani goes into detail about how we might view what is right and wrong when it comes to intellectual property. The common topic we discussed was what are the ethical implications of ripping a CD to a friend’s computer? Well, realistically speaking I think we are geared to find this action wrong because we are in a way depriving the owner of that material income. But what if the person had no intention of buying that album but now they like the artist so much they buy all of their material thereon out? Someone in the discussion made the point that they don’t feel it is wrong to not pay for material they did not plan on purchasing. I agree with this but also understand it is not feasible in society.

What I really comes down to is that there is no in between when it comes to the laws of intellectual property even if there may be with the ethics. It’s easy to say what is right and wrong but hard to enforce, they cannot just make it legal to not purchase I.P. because the person says they weren’t going to buy it anyway. Overall none of the material really changed my perspective but it did make me a bit more aware that there’s a lot of debate about the ethics of intellectual property.