The videos and discussion at the brownbag today led to the common problem copyright causes today: diminishing creativity.  Professor Sikand explained and showed many examples where creativity is stifled by copyright.  Its sad to know that many producers and directors cannot begin their career because of the initial costs due to copyright.  Theres much less incentive to become a movie director when your first film costs thousands in copyright compensation.  This brings me back to Vaidhyanathan’s quotation that copyright “rewards the established at the expense of the emerging.” What was most interesting to me was how rebellious directors become because of these laws.  Professor Sikand seems like a professor that would normally obey rules and laws, but when it comes to copyright she embodies the quotation: “its better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”  Her justification for this mindset is legitimate: If you ask for permission, the owners expect that you have money to pay for their work; on the other hand, if you just use the work and ask for forgiveness, you can be viewed as an innocent, destitute producer trying to make a living.

The website she showed us is very detailed and up to date in the laws of fair use with regards to social media.  It explains the rules and even gives tips on what steps to take if one of your works is in violation of fair use.

The glimmer of hope from Professor Sikand was her explanation of the site for free music.  With our counter argument to copyright being exposure, im glad that this site is in existence. I thought it would be slightly difficult to find this type of website, but once I looked up “free music for exposure” in google, the first 3 websites were Noise Trade, Ustream, and NumberOneMusic; all of which were created to share music in hopes to promote emerging artists.

In this recent case, Disney was accused of copyright infringement for using the idea of dog faces with signatures as a tshirt.  There was an original drawing by a design company with the same idea and the original creator thought that Disney stole this conception.  Initially reading the article, I thought Disney was careful about their “copy” and tried to made sure none of the dog faces or signatures were identical.  If this were true, Disney would probably win the case because copyright protects, ” “idea/expression” dichotomy in copyright law, which is supposed to mean that you only protect the specific and defined expression — not the general idea.”  But after this article was posted, commenters reading the article actually pointed out numerous faces that seemed to be copied from the original.  21/27 faces on Disney’s copy were similar to the original.  The question now is: Can disney be accused of copyright infringement for copying these dogs faces, even though the faces symbolize exclusive breeds that have those types of faces naturally?  Disney symbolizes imagination, creativity, and make-believe.  But did they actually imagine and create this idea? or is it all make-believe?

Taco Bell has a very popular Doritos Loco Taco. This translates to “Dorito Crazy Taco” which means that the taco is a crazy taco that is made out of Doritos. Here is a link to the picture of it. If you look at the logo, you will see that there is a Trademark symbol next to the word “Doritos”. This is because Taco Bell does not own the rights to the word “Doritos”.  Every taco that Taco Bell sells, multiple companies will make a percentage of a profit off of it; Taco Bell will make money because they are the business selling the tacos, and Frito-Lays (the company that makes the Doritos) will make some money because Taco Bell is using their chip as the taco shell.  If you rinse all of the seasoning of a Doritos taco shell off, does that void the agreement between Frito-Lays and Taco Bell? Because technically without the seasoning, the taco shell wouldn’t be a Dorito.

I made posters for my brother when he was in middle school when he was running for student government president and I thought of a campaign to incorporate his name into well known logos and slogans. He didn’t make any money off of these posters, but he gained recognition by his peers for having cool posters that people can recognize. I may have violated copyright laws by making these posters by using other people’s intellectual property, but I think it was okay because it was my idea to use those logos and think of an artistic way to incorporate his name into them.  Since no one made any money, it was purely an art project that benefited my brother. Do you think that companies would be angry that I did this? I don’t think they will because I don’t mean anything to them and I didn’t make millions of dollars off of my alternate designs of their logos.

Jack Daniels (yeah the whiskey) Doesn’t sue over copyright violations. This seems to go so far against the norm of what we have been discussing in class since it would seem that infringement earns the guilty party an immediate lawsuit, especially in the American legal system whee lawyers are looking to establish clearer copyright precedents by pushing their cases as far as they will go.

Instead Jack Daniels writes a kind and polite letter letting the guilty party know that they are in violation and a request is made for the guilty party to change whatever they are doing. Here is an example in which a politician used his name on a logo similar to the Jack Daniels logo. Jack Daniels requested he change the logo when the book was reprinted and even offered monetary assistance if he wished to change the logo in violation sooner rather than at reprinting.

When I approached Professor Sikand to ask her to speak at our brown bag tomorrow and mentioned the topic was fair use, she gave me a book. The book in question was a textbook for the Capstone students (a requirement for the FAMS major, similar to a senior research project in psych). While I forget the exact title the book was an easy read and only took about an hour or two of sporadic attention.

what was notable was the level to which a filmmaker in today’s lawsuit copyright culture must be aware of their surroundings. A simple TV or Computer at the edge of a frame may end up costing thousands in lawsuits. Additionally as a hypothetical say you wanted to do a documentary about street musicians in NYC, unless they wrote their own original songs you would need to get permission to use the copyrighted material (as would the musicians themselves). As my previous post on Tom Waits Mentions, the legal precedent for impersonation is that it is infringement. However due to the fair use policy because you as a filmmaker are not intending to profit off of the song directly and are using only a portion of the song as a portion of a much larger project, Fair use kicks in and you are good to go from a legal standpoint.

So I’m a big Tom Waits fan and he is to say the least fiercely against having his music used in advertising, to quote his wikipedia page: “Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car”, he said in a statement, referring to the Mercury Cougar. “I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.”

Furthermore, Tom Waits took it a step further and when a company asked him to preform for one of their adverts he refused, The company then hired an impersonator to play the song. Waits sued and won.

If we look however at the reading we have done recently this falls in accordance more with the french system of copyright law, in which the rights to the work belong to the author and are at the author’s discretion to claim infringement.

On tuesday the Supreme Court decided to through “out a copyright infringement award to publisher John Wiley & Sonsagainst Thai graduate student Supap Kirtsaeng”, who had been using the internet to resell textbooks bought oversees by his relatives at bargain prices. What does this verdict say about copyright in America? How can textbooks be bought so cheaply in other countries and be priced so high in our own?

Continuing with the social media theme, I just came across this article from January of this year. The article discusses a copyright case between a twitter user and news outlets.  According to the article, this user posted a picture on twitter which some news outlets later published. The judge found that the news outlets were wrong in publishing the pictures because  “Twitter’s terms of service did not give the news agency a license to publish the images without Morel’s permission.” While Twitter may allow for the retweeting of pictures, it does not allow for the commercial publishing of them, as said in its terms of use.  With social media use increasing, copyright infringement is becoming more complicated. What do you think?

In my collaborative essay for our second portfolio, my partner and I talk a lot about fair use.  On the copyright website, to be defined as fair use, the following needs to be considered :

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

In my collaborative essay we looked at Pinterest as a case study.  A Pinterest user myself, I found it hard to find Pinterest as a form of copyright infringement.  I think that Pinterest falls under fair use because when something is pinned or re-pinned, it means something different to each user pinning it.  I also find that Pinterest helps increase the market for a work and helps to better expose original creators. What do you think?