Piracy Podcast and My Thoughts on Copyright Law

Alex Forst's School Picture

My group and I have created a Piracy Podcast. The graphic we used was original work so it is fair use, although, we did use the website Picnik to edit the graphic.  The music we used in our piracy podcast was a country tone from Garage Band that is allowed to be used on a Podcast created in Garage Band.  I believe that downloading music is not wrong as long as you follow all of the Copyright laws, legally download and purchase the music from a store such as iTunes, and give the artist credit for their work.  I think Copyright laws should and need to exist because artists and everyone else in the music industry need to get credit and money for their hard work, although, there shouldn't be as many detailed laws about copyright/piracy as there is today because people get confused about what they can and cannot do.  Many people do not even know or realize that what they are doing is illegal or copyright infringement and they are not aware of the serious consequences.  Piracy is so prevalent or common in today’s society because of the economy and because of people thinking they will never get caught.  Legally downloading all of your music can get expensive, so therefore many people choose to take the risk of illegally downloading music or other media.  Even though people get caught illegally downloading music every day, several people still strongly believe that they will not get caught if they illegally download music because almost everyone does it, so they do it anyway.  I see where the artists are coming from in their part of the argument.  I understand why they get upset when people do not give them credit for their work or when they don’t earn all of the money that they could if copyright infringement didn’t exist, but, if someone used my graphic or podcast without my permission, it wouldn’t really bother me as long as they gave me credit for it.  As far as the graphics go, as long as it's not a personal photo, I wouldn’t care too much.  In conclusion, there are serious consequences if you get caught committing piracy or copyright infringement and that it hurts the artist, songwriters, producers, etc. as well.