Sack Magazine

In today’s society electronic media is the primary source of information and entertainment. Websites such as You Tube and Google allow for information at your fingertips. Many of the movies people watch are produced by a very small number of large companies. This applies to television as well. Many individuals don’t understand that multinational corporations looking to turn a profit produce a great deal of programming in the media we consume. These corporations provide a valuable service to consumers, however a line must be drawn that establishes how much control these companies have over their media. Take Viacom for example. This conglomerate owns and operates an incredible amount of media sources. Viacom operates television channels such as MTV and Comedy Central. Paramount Studios and DreamWorks also fall under the names owned by Viacom. With such a broad array of ownership, Viacom has the ability to enforce its copyrighted material from being copied by anyone. In 2007 Viacom sued You Tube (which is incidentally owned by Google) over hundreds of thousands of videos posted by private citizens. The fact that Viacom sought damages for what it saw as a loss in profits is understandable. The controversy here is that Google was forced to disclose the IP addresses and usernames of people who uploaded the content. This is unacceptable because it makes ordinary people look like criminals when they legally uploaded copyrighted material. The fault should not lie with the users but with You Tube. The unfortunate side effect of the litigation is that corporations such as Viacom take down any copyrighted material uploaded to You Tube because they feel that they will lose money. The debate over copyrighted material seems to be never ending. Recall the Napster trial before the decline of the music industry. People were actually arrested in their homes for uploading copyrighted material. When you go to Best Buy and buy a physical copy of a DVD, shouldn’t that copy be yours to do with what you please? Not according to corporations who cite a loss of profit every time material is copied. Were not talking about making illegal copies and selling them here. Many corporations are trying to make it so you cannot back up a digital copy of copyrighted material that you purchased onto your computer. If this does not seem like a gross invasion of privacy then I don’t know what is. Adding insult to injury, much of the content that these companies want you to buy and watch is absolute crap. When was the last time you saw a music video on MTV? Who watches anything other than South Park on Comedy Central? Spongebob is an annoying gay sponge. What’s appealing about that? I digress. My point here is that corporations like Viacom who own and influence entertainment media have a responsibility to give customers quality content rather than treat them like shit when they attempt to make a copy of a legally purchased item. I believe that we as consumers should take action against said corporations in order to not only bring forth the media content we want to see but uphold our rights as well.