Minyoung Kang/intellectual property/TUE 11

                Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are regulations that were formed to protect the rights of 'Idea Owners'. If someone creates a product or any kind of written or authorized content, those outputs are qualified to be protected by intellectual property rights. If the outputs are copied, duplicated, or utilized without the consent of the owner, this action is infringing IPRs. As the society takes more steps into the complete digital era, the protection of intellectual property should be more guaranteed than ever. IPRs will promote further developments in the intellectual property industry, encourage consumer ethics, and reduce the possible dangers of illegally using copyrighted products.

                First of all, IPRs will be able to motivate the creators to excel in their fields. It will discourage them greatly if they are not able to recoup the money they have invested in the development and are not funded for further research or production. On the other hand, if IPRs are strongly imposed, the creators will have the incentive to continue on with their research and eventually bring forward rapid development in many fields. For example, Korean movie industry is known to be in a depression due to the growing movie downloading websites. If IPRs are fully protected, the movie industry will be able to gain profit and thus provide the moviegoers with better and brand new movies.

                Secondly, protecting IPRs will lead to more ethical consumption. The reason why the illegal downloading business is thriving in most countries is partly attributed to the lack of protection of IPRS. Some people might say that there are still some people who were tracked down by the cyber police for illegal downloading. However, those are very rare and few cases when an illegal downloader was arrested or fined. If IPRs are protected in stricter manner, it will discourage the consumers from choosing illicit downloading websites over legal downloading programs. If this continues, it will be able to promote safer and more ethical consuming patterns of the consumers. Also, the government's effort to raise awareness of the public that illegal downloading is wrong by advertising on TVs and newspapers will be the great first step to ethical consumption.

                Lastly, illegally using copyrighted materials may bring about risks and dangers. This means that nobody can be sure if the products that are duplicated are safe to use. When people illegally download music or movies from a website, they usually suffer from numerous viruses that are downloaded along with the file. They also do not know where the file originated, and whether it was made by someone reliable. Another serious example is generic drugs. Generic drugs are a form of medicine that is made with illegally copied formulas which were created by big pharmaceutical companies. These drugs are usually made with inferior ingredients to be sold in third world countries at lower prices. However, despite its cost and necessity, the danger of these drugs has always been controversial as no one knows whether these drugs are truly effective with safe ingredients inside.

                In brief, the protection of IPRs must be guaranteed in this globalized and digitalized era. Though it seems very attractive to use other's works without asking for their consent, these actions cannot lead to more developments. Infringing IPRs is same thing as infringing our rights. We should stop and think again before downloading illegally, and ask ourselves if we would be happy if others used my work freely without asking. Probably not.