Mcleod

When I first started reading the article I was a little bias. Even though I don’t always follow the copyright laws to the fullest I know that many of the laws are there to protect people’s ideas. I used to download music and I thought it was great because I didn’t need to pay a dollar a song on iTunes or like 15 dollars for a CD. If I just wanted to listen to the song from my computer I could always just listen to it from YouTube. I think it is pretty stupid that people can be sued if they use a sound someone else has used. Could I get sued if I play several notes from a certain song or do I need to play a large portion to get in trouble? Where does it stop because there are only so many keys on different instruments and I am guessing someone else has hit that key before me?

One of the examples that really made me think these laws are stupid and ridiculous is that Donald Trump has trademarked the phrase “You’re Fired” and the hand gesture to go along with it. That is ridiculous does that mean whenever my boss has that talk with me about my performance and I get the boot he is risking getting sued.

I agree that there needs to be some kind of laws about copying people’s things and making money off of it. It seems a tad bit extreme when you are trying to patent anything you see. “In the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty, a bacterium that helped clean oil spills—could not be patented. But the Supreme Court ruled otherwise, stating that ‘anything under the sun that is made by the hand of man’ is patentable subject matter.” I am glad that there is something that help cleans up oil spills but I feel that something that can benefit the earth and mankind should be fair for anyone to use. People aren’t going to spend and arm and a leg to clean that up people will just say forget the oil spill and the wildlife.

All these rules are getting ridiculous, what happened to America the land of the free? What happened to free speech? If I say something in a speech or something that someone else before me has said I am risking getting sued. There are over 200,000 words in the English language if people trademark all of them the world will go mute. I understand that people want money for their ideas, but it is ridiculous when people are trying to patent sounds. Yeah if I copy a whole song shame on me, but if I copy a noise and I get sued that’s just stupid.