CS 408 Assignment #8 - Akshay Abraham

Here are the links to mine and my partners homepages:

My Homepage

Aoi Wem's Homepage

Katia Tsareva's Homepage

Assignment #8 Aoi Wem

Assignment #8 Katia Tsareva

Question

Should people who create something be able to sell their intellectual property according to their own digital management rights? And sould people who buy a copy (say a dvd of a movie) be able to replicate that, there by removing digital rights manage ment restrictions?

Discussion

I think that the people who have created something should always have the right to sell their own intellectual property, because it is their decision. You can not tell someone not to sell their car, its his car, its part of his estate and ownership and so it is his decision as to whether he or she should sell it. Intellectual property is a part of someones estate and so should be treated as such, of course people can voice their opinion on what the owner should do, but inevitably it is the owners decision.

To the second part of the question, yes I think that people who have bought stuff like movies and music should be able to use software that can replicate the original things content because the person has paid for that property and so that property is also rightfully his. The only thing is that I think that it should be kept for personal use, he should not replicate it to sell the item again because that permission I think is only granted to the original maker of the material.

One part that I want to elaborate on is the part to develop the product, now if someone has taken someone elses intellectual property and then has made significant improvements, I would say that it should be okay then to replicate and sell the item because now what this person has done is created something based on a previous work, but not the exact same. A prime example would be software engine, one piece of software is created, however someone other than the creator made a better version of the software, but with a different name and look, therefore I think this just instigates competition between the two softwares. But there are many cases where by this may not work, because no one really has established a line between a good that has broken copyright laws, and a good that is just a better version of a preceeding good.