Being a Government and Law major I am particularly interested in the laws that protect the ideas and inventions of individuals. I would like to learn more about how to formulate and make official copyrights, patents and any other similar documents that show proof of ownership. Furthermore, I would like to know the penalty for violating these copyrights and in general what the law has to say about such documents.  Copyrights and protecting ideas is such an important part of our society especially with new technology which makes the sharing of it effortless.  This new computerized age has called for the changing of laws to accommodate the evolving technology.  These laws are an aspect that I would like to explore during this class.

When looking at the older materials in class on tuesday I began to think about the impact of ebooks on the future of reading. I do not believe this will happen in the near future, but how would items such as the kindle be preserved if society transitioned to a purely electronic means of reading. Technology is constantly evolving and if as a society we were to transition to electronic books would some works be lost in the future due to an inability to access the ebook?

The trip to the library yesterday really tied together the readings for me. It was really cool to see the Egyptian papyrus, the Sumerian stones and the very early typography. I was able to visually see what I was reading about and it made me appreciate books more. It made me appreciate tablets even more than that though.

I am really excited to take a look at intellectual property in other aspects of art, such as music. A lot of current music is not written by the people who are singing it; it is usually written by separate producers. Does this mean that these songs are the intellectual property of the producers/songwriters but the legal property of the recording studio/singer? I have no idea.

This prompt gives alot of room for creativity:  How might it have turned out differently?  There are are numerous ways copyright could have formed but I feel as if it was inevitable.  People like to feel unique.  When someone discovers something new, interesting, and unorthodox we prefer to keep the discovery to ourselves.  Without this type of protection, authors wouldn’t be able to establish an individual identity because anyone could copy their unique style.  For my paper I was thinking about going towards copyright in the music industry and how it would be effected by stricter or more lenient laws.  More lenient laws would probably aid rising musicians to become mainstream, yet it would cause famous musicians to lose credibility by having numerous artists creating similar material.  Either way a change in the current copyright laws would have had drastic effects

It is interesting to think about writing pre-copyright. What is the incentive to write if your ideas can just be stolen and used as someone else’s? Would people be willing or even able to write without falling to the act of plagiarism? But on the other hand, maybe a world without copyright would cause people to produce more art, as there would be less obstacles to get around to publish your works. Perhaps with less competition, more and more people would share their art forms. But  then again, without competition what will writing or art succumb to? It seems logical to assume that without any need for standards, the quality of art may go down. It is hard to say which way things may have gone without copyright. Economically speaking, copyright makes sense that in order to get the best products (books, movies, etc.) there must be competition and incentive. However, it does have it’s fair share of restrictions.

I though the papyrus scroll was one of the most interesting pieces in the collection we looked at on Tuesday. The fact that the scroll is one of the best-preserved pieces in the United States was fascinating, and the scroll itself was a work of art. All of the intricate details and colors, hieroglyphics and other letters were amazing. To think that such a piece of history is still in such pristine condition, even though it existed over 2,000 years ago, is truly mind-boggling. The quality of the papyrus is pristine, and the fact that the writing is still perfectly legible, is amazing. The brightness of the colors and the very vivid feel of the entire work makes me wonder about how future generation would look at our works. Our colors aren’t nearly as rich as the colors on the papyrus, and the quality of our mass-produced items are so poor, they break easily and are faded after a few years. The beauty of art has disappeared with mass production.

Copyright was originally created in a world where modern technology was nonexistent and could likely not even be imagined. Despite the fact that the world we see today has changed so drastically in comparison to the century of copyright’s birth, it is still very much a part of everyday life. In fact, copyright applies to nearly every aspect of creative practice and effects everyone whereas it had previously really only affected a select group of people–those who were well-off enough to actually possess resources allowing them to  copy books and other materials. I wonder how copyright would have developed differently if it were originally created during a time when modern technology existed. Would there be as many restrictions on creative practice as there are today? If the birth of copyright had been delayed a few centuries, would the entire term “copyright” possess an alternate meaning?