EDM613 Wk1, post 3: Response to Angela Alipour

Photo by Jason Peglow (2004)

@ Media Asset Creation Blog (original post by Angela Alipour on March 31, 2011)

The more I hear about copyright and people's opinions the more I begin to think about other reasons besides money. Don't get me wrong, I totally think money has A LOT to do with most people's reasoning for taking someone to court over illegal use of their work. However, not ALL cases are about the money. For example, someone who designs something in memory of their loved one and then sees that design being used as a death metal band's symbol on an album might cause a copyright dispute. I guess what I mean to say is money has a lot to do with it, but sometimes people want their creations or expressions to mean something and protect it from meaning something else. The only way to protect it is to copyright it. 

Media Asset Creation Blog: Wk 1 Reading

(Posted by Angela Alipour on Thursday, March 31, 2011)

When push comes to shove the copy write laws are all about the money. Who can get the most money and how. What’s wrong with someone taking your work and creating something else out of it as long as they give you the credit for being the inspiration of their creation? Especially when they can make it better. If we can do this with text why not film and music? Don’t those people get paid enough? Actually I think that many of them get overpaid.

One of the people that spoke in the video said that an artist needs copy write laws as an incentive to create. Yeah, right! When someone is creating they are not thinking about copy write laws. They are creating.

With the Fair Use law it’s good to know that there is a law that can cover your behind if you need it too. Of course it has to meet the criteria of critical comment, teaching, parody, and news reporting. Even under these circumstances one needs to be careful.

I was happy to know that Creative Commons is available for creators. The saying two brains are better than one is what came to mind when I saw this video. Sharing a personal idea or creation with another person can sometimes cause the other person to elaborate on that idea and the final result can be spectacular.

As I’ve been watching more and more videos about this I find that the music industry seems to have a real issue about copy writing. Wish I would have known about Creative Commons during the FSO music class.

EDM613 Wk1, post 2: Response to Klytia Burcham

Photo by Jason Peglow

@ Copyright, Copyright, What art thou copyright? (original post by Klytia Burcham on Wed, 3/30/11)
I absolutely agree that one of the roots of the copyright argument is the money. Whether it be greed or sustainability, money is one of the reasons why there is a copyright law. However, I think your question about the purpose of sharing one's art, "But isn't there goal of sharing their art to have it influence others?", is the other root of the law. People express themselves for a variety of reasons, but self expression is a very personal thing. To have your thoughts, beliefs, or feelings altered and possibly in a way that goes against your own is hard to accept. Protecting your expression allows you to determine who and how it they can be manipulated. But, I also think that the latter reason for the copyright law is far less predominant that the money reason...unfortunately.
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Blogging with Burcham: Copyright, Copyright, What art thou copyright?

(Posted by Klytia Burcham on Wednesday, March 30, 2011) When I think of copyright issues, I think of the I-tunes vs. Napster issue.  However, it all boils down to whether or not you can completely own intellectual content.  I like the professor who wrote books in the video Good Copy, Bad Copy that stated he knew that students would be processing information  and therefore using some of what his content was.  That copyright was there to protect another author from publishing the same book.  Why then are the other arts so different?

The intention of copyright is to protect the artist from someone stealing their art.  Some would argue that copyright actually inhibits creativity because an artist is not allowed to alter something else he/she sees in their environment and more importantly can not be influenced from a fellow artist to be inspired by it.  This idea is called sampling and a couple of recent genres of music are based on it.  It seems to me that sampling and the concept of fair use are directly opposite from one another.  Fair Use states that you may use a small part or idea from a piece, but not enough to take away from the whole; the article said 5%.  Yet sampling says that you may not take any part or small section from a song, even if it is then distorted, without breaking copyright law.

So why is copyright law different for text compared with video and audio?  Could it be because very few are making money from the information that is synthesized and used from the text book?  Yet, the video and audio that may be altered, slightly used to influence a different piece of audio or video can make a lot of money.  I believe that it all boils down to money.  I believe that there is a need for copyright law.  That artist need to have a way to protect their product from being taken from them.  But isn't there goal of sharing their art to have it influence others?  So again, as in so many issues that polarize our nation, America needs to find a balance between these two extreme camps on copyright.

EDM613 Wk1, post 1: Reading - Copyright Issues

Photo by Jason Peglow (2011)

After viewing all the videos for this week's copyright issues assignment, I am still very confused by all the aspects of copyright even in the black and white areas. I can see both sides of the issue and find my self getting angry and sympathetic about copyright. At one point people enforcing copyright are money-grubbing tyrants, but then I quickly chastise myself thinking it was their creation so they deserve some credit and if not it really is stealing. I even tried to understand Bush's 2002 TEACH law to see how it protected teachers and couldn't really decipher that one either.

Also, as simplistic as Creative Commons makes it to share and use each others' works, I find it is still hard to navigate around the site to find what the actual requirements are to use something. For this reason I find myself shying away from even trying to use anything that is not created by me. I try to take my own photos, mix my own music with loop software, and refuse to post anything suspect.

There were a lot of videos in this lesson that I enjoyed, but Larry Lessing's TED video really stood out for me. His comment about the growing extremism about copyright - with the youth (the copyright abolitionists) on one side and the law (stringent auto-takedowns) on the other - was the depiction of every generational conflict. The youth revolt against the machine so that they can build a bigger and better machine that will be revolted against by the generation after theirs. It is the nature of youth to fight "the man." Youth revolts are how societies change stagnant old culture. I just hope this revolt is more peaceful than some others in our history.

As this copyright war rages on, I think I will go back and see if I can scrounge up some of those old cassette tapes I made when I was a kid where I pirated music off the radio and then strap on my eye patch from my Halloween costume last year ... Arrgh! Hoist the Jolly Roger me matey!