Legal and Ethical Issues

         I believe all journal articles, TV, movies, music, and databases should be free.  When approaching this issue one can direct attention towards the internet, considering the fact it contains all if not most of these things.  I think all information no matter what form it is in, should be made public and not restricted to a limited amount of people.  Things such as music albums and movies playing in theaters is another story as they are forms of revenue collection.  It is also beneficiary to make this kind of mediums of information free, because it is a way to educate people on a plethora of things that one can learn from the forms of information such as research.

This is what open access refers to, making information such as research available to the public for no monetary compensation.  It is vital that the public be informed about issues or recent breakthroughs in science. This helps avoid going through the issues of copyright where one potentially illegally downloads or uses another’s content without permission. Such as issues regarding copyright and open access are discussed in Open access research grows in popularity, where it states: "Swartz, one of Reddit’s co-founders, illegally downloaded a great number of MIT journals in protest of closed-access research.  Swartz was later charged with wire fraud, computer fraud and other charges, which, if convicted, could have resulted in a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.”  Such conflicts like this one can be avoided by making all information or at least research publicly available.