A student comes home to his dorm at the University of Scranton after a rough day .
With the quick internet connection provided on the school's network, the .
student makes a few clicks and logs into Morpheus, a program that enables music fans to .
download free music. Within a few minutes he is on his way to owning an unlimited .
amount of songs at no cost. Everything this student is doing is legal, right? Wrong. The .
downloaded music from the internet is copyrighted material. .
Today's internet is considered an "information superhighway," a device where .
anything from music, books, programs and information can be shared worldwide. Since .
billions of people have the ability to access the internet, the content of the internet can be .
difficult to regulate. One controversy which has risen because people can transmit and .
share information broadly via the internet is that of copyright infringement. Arguments .
over the rights to property on the internet have been heated. For example, Napster .
(similar to Morpheus) was sued for providing software that enabled internet users to .
download music at no cost. Since the internet is a device that is used worldwide, .
copyright laws should exist to protect people who own copyrights so their civil liberties .
are not infringed upon. .
Because the internet is sometimes considered unregulated, users often assume that .
the law does not apply to its use. Widespread misuse of people's intellectual property via .
the internet occurs because of this belief, though anyone can access the internet. Since the .
Kearney 2.
number of people who have the ability to access the internet is so high, laws that are .
made to protect people's publications in other media should also apply to protect them on .
the internet. .
Copyrights that protect products can sometimes be confusing to understand. The .
simplest way to identify copyright infringement is to question if the copyright is handed .
