Transcript: Riley
Chapter 11: Riley notes that copyright motivates creators
To be completely honest, I knew absolutely nothing about copyright before reading this chapter. The term was always something that I heard in passing, but I never took the time to actually think about what it meant.
Reading this chapter helped me understand the importance of copyright law and how it helps to motivate creators to do more research and create more content by allowing them to profit from it.
One of the most difficult things for me is making the distinction between what is covered by copyright and what isn’t. The trickiest for me is the fact that a work is not protected by copyright forever and does eventually re-enter public domain. From the description in the textbook, it looks like copyright lasts for a long time, but the idea that it does eventually end surprised me a little.
Another thing that I found to be surprising was the criminal punishments for infringing on copyright law. Apparently, you can be criminally prosecuted! I bet that doesn’t happen very often – or maybe only if there is a lot of money being lost by the copyright holder.
