The biggest War has already started

At the moment all around the world there is ani-piracy 'war' that took place after US Piracy Officials took down site: megaupload.com and megavideo.com, famous for sharing films, videos, photos and files that user could share on social media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. In return the best group of hackers that defend user rights: Anonymous, took down Department of Justice. This is all thanks to SOPA and PIPA.


What is SOPA and PIPA?
SOPA stands for 'Stop Online Piracy Act' and 'PIPA for Protect IP Act', both of these acts happened because of online piracy infringement, government was unable to stop copyright infringements by suing individual users so US decided to go beyond and create an act that internet providers and search engines would take particular responsibility for their users. So your current internet provider at the moment might have preview of the things you search and do on the internet.


Personally I think this is the answer from the government to the artists and celebrities and people that are currently making millions on their work. From one perspective it is wrong, but even government will not be able to stop people from downloading songs, movies, software, etc.. They would of have to case almost 90% of human population or cut the internet.

Design Right

The term "Design Right" refers to the specific legal protection available to unregistered designs in the UK.

There are specific differences between Design Right and Registered Designs.

Registered Designs give you exclusive rights in a design, in the UK, for up to 25 years. You can stop people making, offering, putting on the market, importing, exporting, using or stocking for those purposes, a product to which your design is applied. You can protect two-dimensional designs or surface patterns as well as shape and configuration with a Registered Design.

By comparison, Design Right gives you automatic protection for the internal or external shape or configuration of an original design, i.e. its three-dimensional shape. Design Right allows you to stop anyone from copying the shape or configuration of the article, but does not give you protection for any of the 2-dimensional aspects, for example surface patterns. Protection is limited to the United Kingdom (UK), and lasts either 10 years after the first marketing of articles that use the design, or 15 years after creation of the design - whichever is earlier. For the last 5 years of that period the design is subject to a Licence of Right. This means that anyone is entitled to a licence to make and sell products copying the design.

If you are the owner of a design right subsisting in a design, you have the exclusive right to reproduce the design for commercial reasons by making articles to the design or by making a design document recording the design for the purpose of enabling articles to be made. If anyone else carries out these activities without your permission, they may infringe the design right.

However, it is more difficult to prove infringement of an unregistered Design Right as you must be able to prove it was copied, or that the potential for copying existed.


http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/design/d-about/d-designright.htm

Copyright Images (Photography)

The case with image is that the author (the photographer) is the owner of the copyright. There are two exceptions that I have mentioned previously: 

1. The photograph has been taken under the company that an author works for. 
2. The author of the photo passes the copyright to someone else.

So under any other circumstances copyright of the image stays with the author, even if the work has been pre-paid for the purpose of the images previously. 

In case of photographs it is very important to copyright them by registration, as it is very hard to identify the ownership. Photographs can be registered under a fee of application not individual photos. In order to use photographs, it is essential to contact the photographer and receive their permission to use/publish their work.

Copyright Ownership

In another words the owner of the copyright will be an author (authors if more then one) of the work produced or an emploee if the work has been produced for work purposes. Ownership however has to meaning as it is attached to two seperate things. Owning a copyright and owning the product, the difference is that an author holds copyright owenership and it stays unless an author decides to transfer copyright to someone else or licenses the work under certain conditions. Therefore the owner of the work can righly keep the work and if author agrees to license it then the owner can do certain things with it, like distrubotion, reproduction and manipulation.

Copyleft

"Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free (libre), and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well." - Wikipedia

Copyleft is simply a contrast of copyright, which means it doesn’t restrict/limit the work to be reproduced, copied, and sold under another name. The work under copyleft license is under free to use, free to study and adapt, free to copy and share and also free to distribute modified version.

Illegal Downloading

From the recent news illegal downloading seems to be very popular in the UK, statistically more then half of the population in Britain has engaged in some form of copyright infringement because of download. Popularity of downloading in itself is very heavy in internet, in some occasions it even persuades to get the music, film, game or any other sort of multimedia for free. Of course free content saves money as well as time, but in effect music and film industries are on the shy side.

"Illegal downloading in the UK has become a massive threat to the music and film industries. In 1997, 78 million singles were sold in the UK; last year, it was just 8.6m. It is estimated that half the population has engaged in some sort of nefarious downloading in the last five years."

So the big question is, what is being done at the moment to stop 'cyber criminals'? So a part of heavy penalties a 'downloader' can face even imprisonment depending the action taken. Of course if someone makes a living out of download penalty will be definitely much more higher and more serious in comparison to download distributor. As it said in Independent:

"The penalties for copyright offences depend on seriousness, but at the higher end of the scale it can lead to an appearance before a magistrate where the sanction for distributing unauthorised files is a fine of up to £5,000 or six months' imprisonment. The worst cases may be sent to the Crown Court, which has the power to impose an unlimited fine and up to 10 years' imprisonment."

Indeed, downloading can get very serious, all because of copyright. As it may seem to most of the web users that web portals are law-free but all of the web sites should contain a disclaimer or/and terms and conditions page with the rules of use. Statement below just simply explains it all straight to the point:

"The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002, currently protects copyrighted materials. People who distribute and download copyrighted recordings without permission face civil actions for potentially thousands of pounds of damages."

The twist in this whole 'download-copyright' case is that if there is a chance to proof that a user was downloading files for just personal purposes, that would simply make him/her escape from the criminal offence, however that might not always be the case. So another question that arises with this is; how do they do it? The answer to this question is NOT that they hack in to your computer and check your files and data. because that would be illegal to do so. Your ISP which is your internet provider may have agreed to work with British Photographic Industry (BPI) which track particular sites and then information from your ISP is then provided to BPI and they literally do all the rest. Here is what BPI Greoff Taylor (Chief Executive) said in Independent:

"There is not an acceptable level of file-sharing. Musicians need to be paid like everyone else." - Greoff Taylor

At the moment this is the case in Britain as it is one of the leaders in download copyright, somewhere after US which comes as No.1. Be safe.

Independent, Whats happens in you're get caught? [08 July 2009]

Copyright Case III - Apple vs Samsung Galaxy Tab

“Reuters, which followed the court hearing, notes that the comments
came as part of request by Apple to get an injunction
against Samsung’s tablets in the U.S., and that a formal order on
whether Samsung infringes on an Apple utility patent will be issued
“fairly promptly.”
“We are awaiting the judge’s decision, and Samsung will continue
to actively defend its intellectual proprery rights,” a Samsung
spokesman told CNET.
An Apple spokeswoman reiterated a statement made by the company
earlier this year saying “it’s no coincidence that Samsung’s
latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape
of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging.
This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s
intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”
The judge’s comments come the same day Apple won an interlocutory
injunction by the Federal Court of Australia against Samsung
and the company’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, keeping the product
from being sold in the country until the case goes to trial. In that
complaint, Apple had argued that the device infringed on two of
its patents relating to multi-touch technologies.” - Lowensohn, J.
(2011)

Analysis
This is very recent case again involving Apple Corp. There is a
tough battle between those two companies Apple and Samsung
and their products. In this copyright infringenment product design
has its key, as Apple claims that Samsung copies product
and packaging designs which I believe is correct. Because of this
Samsung may lose lots of money as this affects selling among
countires.