A recent event has come up that is related to what has been discussed both in class and the readings involving copyright. The event involves a further continuation of the efforts being made to enforce copyright laws and limit fair use over the internet. Just this past week the newly formed Center for Copyright Information (CCI) announced the release of the Copyright Alert System. The goal of this program is to severely limit the act of piracy online. Essentially, this program sends warning emails to people who the CCI has determined have committed copyright fraud. These emails serve not only to warn people, but also to educate on what is and isn’t acceptable. If an individual gets repeated offenses, the CCi can enact penalties on them, which include slowing internet speeds or temporarily reducing internet access. Many are concerned over this development, and rightly so. It seems as if this program could potentially strike another blow to the campaign for fair use over the internet. It will be interesting to monitor this program in the near future to see what the effects of it are.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/1550750/guest-post-will-the-copyright-alert-system-break-the-internet-by-future-of

I just stumbled across this website for kids that teaches them about copyright.  It is pretty entertaining so feel free to take a look!

“It rewards the established at the expense of the emerging”

-Siva Vaidyanathananan

When it comes to parodies or covers, is there a certain point where the cover is considered to be an original piece? I have thought about this before. What if in 3000 years, every single possible combination of musical notes has been put together, so there would not be any more original music. What would copyright laws do then?

At my internship this past summer, I got an interesting inside look at the publishing world.  Someone in the office made a joke that the company ran entirely on the royalties it made off of one extremely popular piece.  When I inquired into this, I learned that in the music business, royalties must be paid (to the artist/composer/publisher/recording company, etc.) every time a song (or part of a song) is used in a commercial setting.  This included commercials, web advertisements, soundtracks, public performances – you name it.   This idea was supported by Goldstein’s comment that “copyright is about money” (Goldstein 4).  Goldstein also discusses the concept of royalties when he mentions compulsory licenses, which legally force artists who cover another artist’s song to pay $0.08 for each recording of the cover (Goldstein 15).

This article offers an example of a company, Kobalt Music Group, that focuses on delivering royalty payments to artists.  Kobalt acknowledges that the digital age has made tracking the royalties due to artists more difficult, but also understands that royalties are a large portion of artists’ revenue.

While researching for my previous blog post, I found this 2010 article from the New York Times.  I felt that it needed its own post, as it deals with plagiarism in a slightly different way.  This article focuses on the role of technology in regards to plagiarism.  The author examines plagiarism in college and how digital media is blurring rules of plagiarism, as more and more students fail to cite their sources from neglect and ignorance.  Students are also more often directly copying from websites and other digital sources, as the internet has made this even easier, with a simply “copy” and “paste” command.  The author writes that the internet is changing how students “understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.”  The author includes shocking statistics, such as one that states that “the number [of students] believed that copying from the Web constitutes “serious cheating” is declining — to 29 percent.”

It’s a pretty interesting article.  This relates directly not only to this class, but to our lives as college students, as we continue our undergraduate educations and technology continues to play a larger role in this education.

In Copyright’s Highway, Goldstein briefly touches upon a concept that is brought up so often on college and university campuses: plagiarism.  Goldstein writes, “True plagiarism is an ethical, not a legal offense and is enforceable by academic authorities, not courts” (Goldstein 8).  Lafayette has a strict policy against plagiarism and is found in the Student Handbook, the Faculty Advising Handbook, and on the website of the Dean of the College, to name a few sources.  I was shocked to discover that this concept, which I had for so long believed to be illegal, was not in fact supported by any court, but rather only upheld by academia.

What do you think? Should plagiarism be illegal, or is the upholding of rules against plagiarism by colleges and universities unnecessary, as it is technically considered legal in the United States?

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/shirt+tempest+tests+copyright/8016293/story.html

http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/539930/surrey-up-in-arms-over-the-future-dies-here-spoof-hoodies/

Today in class we discussed the place of parodies within copyright law. Similar discussions are also being had in Surrey, Vancouver. Recently, a local resident and entrepreneur started to sell clothing that read, “Surrey, the future dies here.” The city’s actual motto is, “Surrey, the future lives here.” The gun logo resembles the shape of the city’s skyline in the actual logo. In America, parodies are given more liberty to copy original works. Canada, however, only recently added parodies to its list of what is protected under copyright law. If the Canadian judicial system uses precedent like the American judicial system does, a future lawsuit could begin to clarify the freedom that parodies to mock work in Canada. That would be pretty important, eh?