What I learned in today's copyright presentation

Today in Computer Skills 1300 class, I learned about copyright law, and the circumstances which determine if something is a copyright infringement. Copyright law came into existence in America in the year 1790. It protects restricts the ownership of anything you make (put into a fixed tangible physical format) to yourself, no one else can use your intellectual property without your permission. As soon as any creative or other work of intellectual property is put in a fixed tangible medium, whether it is programmed, photographed, saved digitally or any other fixed medium it is automatically protected under copyright law. Copyright exist for the life of the author +70 yrs. Even if someone's work is "out of print" it is not treated any differently under copyright law. This is because it is still the intellectual property of the creator. IN the interest of maintaining copyright, it is very likely that the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and ESA (Entertainment Software Association) are disproportionately interested in campus-based file sharing. There isn't any publically known information to prove or disapprove this statement. Copyright law can't protect everyone from everything.

Personally in my opinion, copyright laws are a necessity, even though there are ways that someone’s work can still be claimed as the work of someone else. For instance a drawing or any other form of art which has no signature can be claimed by someone else as their own work. Even though copyright law does state that as soon as something is recorded in a fixed tangible format it's protected under law, there usually is not a video camera or other surveillance method monitoring the process which was used to make the art. So someone else could claim someone else’s art work as their own property. Copyright law can't protect everyone from everything. I argue this point because I as an artist know that plagiarism of another artists’' work is something that is quite feasible. I have in the past given away beautiful portraits and other works of art, and someone could claim it as their own. No matter what I say, I did not make a visual record of me creating the art, so therefore, someone else could take it and claim it as his or her creation.