Copyright Law

The picture above was taken around the corner from my house, where there has been "ongoing construction" for as long as I've been in town. Capita Building is the company that has been slowly putting something together (it took about a week to get this fence up and painted).

If you can see the picture well enough, you will not that Capita's motto is "We bring good things to life." Just type that phrase into google and you will most likely be directed promptly to the homepage of General Electric. That's because for many years this was GE's slogan (the world's 4th most recognizable brand).

This isn't some earth shattering revelation, but copyrights are the Rodney Dangerfield of Bangladesh... they get no respect. To say that they are liberal with intellectual property is like wisely asserting one should not pee on the electric fence.

What are the implications for me? Well, I get a lot of DVDs for very cheap, some even before they are out of the theaters. On the flip side, there is a lot of crap out there that bears the name of a reputable product. So while I will be watching the new Star Trek movie soon, I also almost bought the new Wolvering... pre-postproduction. It can be a bit distracting when you are watching an action-packed sequence and there is a note that says "gun here" on the screen, or there is a giant green screen in the background.

So that's how copywrite laws work. It ensures that the manufacturer can exploit the product's value to market limit, and that the consumer gets a quality (though possibly overpriced) product. Well you might say, Beckley, you seem to be doing alright when it comes to your movie selections, and its true that the risk of a bad movie has not made me unwilling to buy more. However, if this was say, a pacemaker, I would be a little more cautious.

So anyways, this is a but mundane, but it is an example of the primary effect of living abroad (at least for only one year). In the US I take copyrights for granted, and am occasionally annoyed by the applications. In the 'Desh I am able to not only imagine, but inhabit a world in which the opposite is true, and evaluate the alternative.