Sociology

Every individual has been endowed with inert abilities and potential to originate creative works and ideas that are supposed to be unique to the originators personality and peculiarities. The need to encourage the creative abilities of individuals has also been regarded as essential. It is regarded as crucial to the preservation of the unique potential in people. Besides, every individual has a right to claim ownership over works, ideas and intellectual properties emanating from them. This is the main concern behind the enactment and the establishment of the copyright law in various locations across the globe. The purpose of the copyright law is to ensure that creativity is enhanced by the assignment of the exclusive rights of people to the ideas, works and properties created by them. In addition, the copyright law ensures that these creative items are made available for commercial purposes where necessary without any prejudice or damage to the right of the originator or author of such items.

The copyright law of the United States confers on the author the right to reproduce, distribute and display his work. At the same time, the law encourages the author to prepare other forms of addendums to or adaptations of the original works. This places the exclusive right of ownership of creative works and researches solely on the author. In this regard, any act that undermines the intended goal of the copyright law should be discouraged.

Though the innovation in digital technology is to be applauded, it is important that this technological drive pose no threat to the enforcement of the copyright law (especially at the traditional level). Permitting the copying, display and presentation of copyrighted materials for commercial or other purposes without due regard for the author discourages the creativity drive. It has a high tendency of limiting the extent to which people in the society can explore their potential for coming up with creative ideas and researches. This, on the long run, will retard the growth and development of the society, especially in the area of improvement in technology. The possibility is high that people will want to shy away from exploring creativity if the application of digital technology in providing copies of peoples works becomes an exception in the copyright law. Definitely, instead of focusing on becoming more creative and ingenuous, the society has a tendency to gravitate towards the use of the digital technology to copy and make peoples work available without their consent. This rather unacceptable if the society must make progress.

In addition, exempting the use of the digital technology in reproducing creative items is indirectly an infringement on the right of authors if their consent were not sought in the reproduction. Based on this and the earlier discussed premise, the traditional copyright rule should be maintained as far as the application of the digital innovation is concerned in copying creative works.