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Music copyright infringement How Does Music Copyright Infringement Affect Me? Music copyright infringement happens all around us every day, by both well meaning people downloading music from their favorite social networking site to the guy who’s reselling MP3s. To be certain, most people who commit music copyright infringement don’t realize what’s going on, and are in turn doing something very illegal and prosecutable in the United States. Copyright Infringement, as defined by Wikipedia.org states: “Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material that is protected by intellectual property rights law particularly the copyright in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term bootleg (derived from the use of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) is often used to describe illicitly copied material.” We’ve all heard of ‘bootleg’ recordings – usually audio recordings taken from concerts and sold on home made cassettes or CDs and distributed (sometimes out of the trunk of a car) to anyone that will buy. Bootleg recordings have changed, however, as music copyright infringement has branched into video recordings. Music copyright infringement has exploded with the advent of the internet, and now people from all over the world are sharing every type of imaginable file – from eBooks to audio to music – and small label artists began feeling the pinch years ago. However, many new and older artists are beginning to see the beauty of the internet, and are offering their music for sale track-by-track on iTunes and other MP3 sales websites, as well as through their own band websites and MySpace pages. The internet has exploded in the possibilities it’s given up and coming musicians to become visible, while at the same time drastically increasing the number of music copyright infringement cases – some of which were against innocent people who just weren’t informed. Music copyright infringement cases have helped to create organizations that protect the fair use of an item, such as a song. Organizations such as CreativeCommons.com and the Electronic Frontier Foundation help individuals to know their rights under copyright acts. While there are organizations that help you understand your rights as a purchaser of copyright use, there are organizations that want to limit the ways in which you use the products you buy. It is rumored, for example, that record distribution and production companies want to limit the ways in which you use the music you buy – they don’t want you to put it on your computer or make a Mix Tape or CD from it – for fear of ‘sharing.’ It seems to me, however, when music publishers and distribution companies limit uses like this, they’re opening up a tidal wave of music copyright infringement cases. By limiting the use of purchased material, the companies are alienating their client base and pushing all their sales away from physical products and toward electronic ones – which are much harder to control. A way in which these companies tried to limit the uses was by creating a DRM program, which severely limited the where a CD could be played (on one computer, for instance). And, in one drastic measure, Sony placed a DRM program on all their CDs in the Winter of 2005, and severely crippled several networks when their ‘program’ was actually malware that seriously crippled network security. As you can see, music copyright infringement is something that is currently being fought between end users and music production and distribution companies. In this new century, we must find a way to retain copyright, and allow the customers to use the products they buy in a meaningful way, or otherwise the market will shift and the industry as we know it will be abandoned.

Why Taking that Vacation Can Lead to a Better Workplace Do you love your vacations? Are they relaxing, fun and entertaining? There are many reasons why a vacation can enrich your life and fulfill you with joy and happiness. But many of these reasons actually can also be directly translated into reasons for why taking that vacation can lead to a better workplace for you, your boss and other employees. Vacations are as essential to a hard working employee as a parachute to a person jumping from an airplane with the goal to land safely. Many employers would love to minimize the time you are gone from your workplace because they think the more time you spend there, the more work you will accomplish. This argument is right up to a certain amount of hours and days a months or a year, but whenever your body starts to get tired and exhausted, the amount of work that you produce decreases. The quality of your work starts to decline as well. Time off work, time together with your family, time to relax, time to regenerate and time to just plain have fun are very important in an employees life. Taking a vacation has many benefits to the employee, but also to the company you work for. The more relaxed and happy your worker starts a workday or the workweek; the better will most likely be his or her performances at work. Research has shown that relaxation and regeneration are essential to human bodies. Did you know that in some companies in Europe and Asia, the emphasis on relaxation goes so far that meditation, morning sport and a short power nap belong to their required parts of a work day? The United States is actually one of the only industrialized countries that does not mandate a minimum of vacation days that the worker has to take off. In fact, in many countries in Europe, a minimum of 20 and more days is the norm. Since the late 1970s, the average middle income family works in total hours three and more months a year more then they did back then and according to a research done by Boston College, approximately 25% of Americans do not take a vacation at all. After all these facts are slowly emerging from mounts of collected date, some of the bigger American companies have actually begun to realize that off-time and vacation are essential to prevent mishaps and screwed up designs and products. If you are not taking your vacation or your employers does not allow for any vacation, a series of health hazards such as stress and high stress, sleeplessness, burnout, heart attacks and even more serious health conditions can occur. Another big factor in working too much, working overtime or never having vacation can be problems and loss of family and friends. Problems with families and friends will directly impact performance at work and even though the employee might not talk about it at work or might b e holding back his or her feelings, the mood and general behavior of the employee will have an impact ion his work and other employees. Every employee should value the vacation time given to him or her and employers should grant the time asked for to their employees. Vacation is essential to the performance at work and the quality in products the company can deliver. Following the examples that are set by many European countries, the US should give their employees the time they need and also make sure that their employees do take the time off to be a better employee overall. Vacation is fun, relaxing and regenerating.

Find Free Stuff Online by Visiting the FreeStuffOnline Website Whatever it is somebody is searching for, he might be able to find it on the FreeStuffOnline website. The FreeStuffOnline website is a page that offers links to other pages that have products that are free off charge available to anybody. Pages like this one collect links and web addresses that offer free products and then publish it as a great resource to the broader public. The links offered by FreeStuffOnline leads to a variety of different topics and offers and there might be just what someone one is looking for. The web page offers categories such as educational freebies, which includes Study notes, Encyclopedias, books and more. Family freebies have categories for babies, children and parents. For the computer world there are free products such as free antivirus software, freeware programs, games and graphics, shareware, music and screensavers. For the cell phone fanatic, there are links to free cell phone ring tones and short message programs. A seasonal freebie category holds anything that relates to the major holidays in the United States, such as Christmas, Halloween, Easter and more. The category “internet” offers links to free web hosting pages, e-mail providers and much more. The way such pages work is by the various masters that take care of adding and removing links. As a matter of fact, anyone can add freebie links to the page. This is one of their most important tools to keep such a freebie page working. Anyone who finds a good freebie that is not a fraudulent page should go to the FreeStuffOnline web page and add the link. Other people will benefit from the link just as much as the person that added it. To keep such sites possible the effort of anyone that is looking for freebies is necessary. There are many organizations out there that specialize in providing help for the ones that do not have a wealthy family to pay for all of it. Organizations that specialize in literature offer PDF files of books of world famous authors such as Shakespeare, books that anybody should have the chance to read. Other pages specialize in children’s songs. Downloadable MP3s, legal downloads of these songs are available to make music an integral part of young children’s lives. Even for the new craze of sharing pictures, files and other important date there are links that guide the user to pages that will offer such services for free. Sharing pictures with loved ones should be easy and free and available to anybody. Whether it is the grandparent that lives hundred of miles away or a father that serves in the army, these pages offer the opportunity to anyone to share important data such as pictures over the distance. Using an online file sharing web page also has the advantage of speed over regular mail. Until the pictures are sent to their destination by mail, it can take days, but on the Internet the process takes a few seconds and the person at the other PC can see the data almost instantly. When these files are shared there is always the possibility to have the pictures printed at one of the photo stores and the person will still be able to hold printed pictures in their hands. One other important fact to know about these free online pages like FreeStuffOnline is that whenever you come onto a link that is not working, let them know, only by people telling the web master that the link is not working it can be removed. Helping to maintain the page by alarming for broken links can reduce the frustration to other that was trying to check out the link.