Category Archives: Course Stuff

Hands-On

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The question that stuck out to me from this week’s blog prompt was, “In an age when we manipulate devices with our hands all day long to do our work, what counts as ‘hands-on’?” First, reflecting on the visit to the library and EPI, hands-on used to mean the work required to actually make a book: setting the letters, inking the machine, pulling the press, etc. Hands-on in the most literal sense. Today, we consider that type of “hands-on” work to be craftsmanship. Hundreds of years ago, however, that was just considered typical work. Secondly, last semester I was involved in the 50 States of Grey Election Night broadcast. When people ask me to describe the class, I always say that it was a wonderful experience because it was hands-on learning. It was not hands-on like making a book on the printing press, however. To me, hands-on has become a figure of speech, not a physical description of the work. Rather than sitting in class taking notes, we went out into the field and filmed the stories that we pitched, worked with classmates, designed sets, and studied topical issues and races in preparation for the live broadcast. We solved problems and made decisions. We were involved in every step of the production, and for that reason, it was a hands-on learning experience.

registering a work

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At EPI the professor explained to us how easy it is to register a work on the US Copyright Office website so after hearing this, I decided to explore the website myself.  I was surprised to learn that for only $35 someone could file a basic claim online and it only takes about 2.5 months to process online. In my mind, I always expected copyrighting to not only be a long process, but also an expensive one.  Before visiting the website, it also never crossed my mind that copyrights in the US are recognized in many other countries and vice versa.  After looking at this website, I also got to thinking about patents.  Unlike copyrights, patents require lawyers.  Having to hire a lawyer not only makes a patent more expensive than a copyright, but I would think it would also increase the length of time it takes to acquire one.   We put a great deal of value on our belongings and property, so I would think that if more people were to recognize how easy and cheap it is to file a claim for a copyright, more would do so.

Experimental Printing Institute

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Today’s class was really eye opening. After reading and hearing about the different printing presses, it was really cool to get to try and use one.  I wasn’t expecting to feel such a difference between the words on a page from press versus ones from a digital printer. I also gained a greater appreciation for those who specialize in these presses.  If it takes hours to lay out a small paragraph, I can’t even imagine having to print books. I didn’t realize how tedious the process could be.

internet and books

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I am unsure of whether what I am writing makes sense because my thoughts are currently all jumbled in my head, but one thing I have noticed with our generation is that books seem to get lost in the age of the internet.  With the internet there to provide answers to questions and to provide reading material, at least among many people I know, the library is no longer a place to actually borrow books, but rather one for quiet studying. Granted, I have friends who still frequent the library for its books but that does not account for the majority of the people I know.  In regards to rare books and the questions, where do we find information on them and where do we find images of them, a reasonable answer could be the internet. However, I think many people fail to notice that there are also many libraries that specialize in such books.  After viewing in class the different texts, I think it is most beneficial to see these books in person so that one can fully appreciate their qualities.  Is the internet taking away from the unique qualities rare books posses?

Tuesday’s Class

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When I first learned we were going to have class in the library on Tuesday to look at old texts, I think it is safe to say that I was not amused.  I went into the class with little to no enthusiasm. After having read all about the infancy period of books, looking at them just seemed like such a dull activity.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by Tuesday’s class. I ended up really enjoying seeing the different texts and comparing them in real life to the imagines I had imagined.  As people have previously stated, the egyptian scroll was definitely very cool, as were seeing texts that were printed next to texts that were handwritten.

Zero Draft Idea

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When I first thought about intellectual property I started to think back on a documentary I had watched last year on music sampling. In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a sound recording in a different song or piece. In this manner, artists are able to build off of each other’s works. The original artist gets a certain royalty from the use of their old track and sampling often enables their old song to gain new exposure. As I became more interested in this topic I started to research Creative Commons Licenses. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers free legal tools to protect the use of creative work while maximizing the amount of material that is available for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing (Creative Commons 2010). It is interesting to consider Creative Commons Licenses as an “alternative history” to copyright laws.

 

Who Needs An Autopen When You Could Have Margaret?

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First to give this scene context (or at least what I can recall as the context): President Bartlett had been shot and was undergoing an emergency operation. He had not signed a document releasing himself from power. At the time, there was a large international crisis occurring so officials were unsure who was Commander-in-Chief.

Admittedly, I was searching Youtube for a different scene from the West Wing that highlighted speech writing, but stumbled upon this rather topical scene en route. Here, the power and meaning of a signature are highlighted. What is the difference between an autopen and a perfected (perhaps a better adjective would be forged) signature of a person? Is it the intent of the owner of the idea? President Bartlett did not authorize Margaret to sign on his behalf whereas he might authorize the use of an autopen to sign legislation. Also, Leo questions why Margaret is even practicing President Bartlett’s signature. How should a person’s signature be valued and should it be protected, if possible?

Course of the Course

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In our first week of readings and discussions, we talked about how technology and available materials affect publication. We also analyzed the experience between author and reader and how it relates to ownership of text. I am interested how in these ideas, as well as those that we will learn about this semester, apply to literary and daily experiences in today’s age and in the future. What do I mean by that?

Recently, I sent out an email to set up a meeting for my Student Organization Committee. One of the committee members emailed back asking what he should bring to the meeting to which I was going to respond a pen and paper until I realized that this technology is becoming increasingly outdated. Smartphone technology, iPads, computers, etc. are changing the way people record notes. What does this mean for how note taking and idea exchange is recorded? How will we access and assess this information in the future when smartphones, iPads, and computers are outdated? In 100 or 1000 years, will people be able to look back at our notes and written record of exchanges like we were able to see when we looked at the cuneiform tablets in the library on Tuesday? Does it matter?

Secondly, when we discussed the relationship between reader and author presented by Baurtes (the reader adds his or her own interpretation to the work), it reminded me of the dilemma of text messaging and emails. More and more, technology is becoming a substitute for human interactions. Sometimes, readers misperceive the message sent via text or email because they cannot get the facial or vocal cues given by the author. Are there other instances that we will encounter that we can apply more broadly to our own lives?

Zero Draft Portfolio 1

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Just a few things I am thinking about for my first essay.

In our contemporary world and modern day society, copyright functions as a control in different markets.  From music to publishing, copyright acts as a way for artists and creators to decide under what conditions, if any, others may use their work.  If we no longer had the protection of copyright, then we could essentially take control of these different markets, adapting the creations within each to our own personal perceptions.  How could this be beneficial to the public? How would the elimination of copyright impact artists? If printing houses hadn’t differentiated themselves from one another, would copyright exist today?

Watermarks and Their Impact on Copyright: A Zero Draft Response

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In the early days of book history, many of the books being printed were religious texts such as the Bible or the Mainz Psalter, which have no clear author.  So, rather than distinguish these texts by an author, they were distinguished by their printing house.  Fust and Schoffer, who worked alongside Gutenberg, distinguished the Mainz Psalter, their set of commonly sung church psalms, with a printer’s device, or “a logo representing the book’s house of origin” (Howard 34).  After Fust and Schoffer, Howard notes that many other printing houses followed suit.  This tradition may be traced back to the development of watermarks by printing houses in the earlier days of printing.  Howard notes that, over time, many printing houses developed watermarks to be printed on the paper created in that particular printing house.  This served to distinguish the work of each printing house from one another.  This seems to be, according to Howard, one of the first forms of ownership in book printing.

Had printing houses not felt the need to distinguish their works from one another, would publishing houses today feel the need to do the same?  Would copyright and ownership laws be any different?  These are the questions I aim to answer in my first paper of the portfolio.