The Brown Bag was very informative and once again it was curious to see the opinions of someone who actually has to deal with copyright. She was a very good speaker and I liked how she incorporated media into her presentation. I also found her opinion on copyright to be interesting as it was negative. This opinion was probably formed by the many hoops she has to jump through to simply have a song in her movies.
“For the purpose of this honor system, the use by a student of someone else’s material with intention of using it for credit as if it were his own” This is a quote which the is the definition of what plagiarism is. I found it interesting the use of the word “intention.
Recently, Nintendo lost a lawsuit to Tomita Technologies over the 3DS, more specifically, the 3D technology used on the 3DS. Tomita Technologies owns the patent on a specific technology for 3D viewing without the need for extra devices, which ended up being used on the 3DS. Once this was found out, Nintendo was found guilty of infringement and fined over $30 million.
The interesting thing is, while the idea and patent belong to Tomita Technologies, they did not use it. In the mean time, Nintendo used it, released a product and made a huge profit. In that regard, was Tomita Technologies actually “harmed” in anyway? Or were they merely fighting to say they had the idea first?
Article: Here
One sentence in Goldstein’s book Copyright’s Highway that really stuck out to me is when he plainly states, “private copying cannot be regulated”. As simple as this statement is, I feel it could not be more true. It was refreshing to hear Goldstein state this since I think it is something everyone has thought at one point or another in relation to America’s copyright system. No matter how much the copyright system improves in the years to come, I don’t think that private copying will ever become totally extinct. There will always be people who know how to get around copyright laws and possess both the technology and wit for doing so.
I recently stumbled upon this website that lists and discusses a bunch of famous copyright infringement cases in relation to the music industry. I thought it was really interesting to find that so many well-known artists have been accused of copyright infringement. It makes me wonder which of these artists are actually guilty of intended infringement and which of them simply chose an unlucky string of words to be in their song.
I thought that the brownbag on Thursday was extremely interesting and it taught me a lot of things about copyright that I had never really considered or put much thought into. For example, I found it really shocking how much trouble the creator of a documentary has to go through to get certain aspects of the film cleared. I would have never guessed that it is such an arduous process. What particularly shocked me was learning how much trouble the speaker went through in an attempt to get Ke$ha’s song cleared in her documentary. Upon learning this, I couldn’t help but think to myself what a persevering woman the creator of the documentary was. I am sure that a lot of artists would not have attempted to go through the trouble she did, and would instead be tempted to give up and just cut that clip from the film altogether.
I noticed that Ke$ha does have a history of going after those who infringe works she has copyrighted, and that she is a bit picky when it comes to allowing others to use her work. For example, here is a case I found in which Ke$ha is suing the Wimo Labs company for copyright infringement:
http://www.andpop.com/2011/05/10/kesha-sues-wimo-labs-for-copyright-infringement/
It seems like every time I sit down to do these posts, another one of those pirate websites (Megaupload, The Pirate Bay, etc.) is losing a court case. This time, the unlucky party is BitTorrent. Recently, this website and its associates lost a major ruling against Disney, Fox, Paramount, and a slew of other major producers. The ruling was that BitTorrent was allowing for people to illegally download and distribute films and television shows. The ruling was unanimous, and charges will be named soon. It seems as if a new change is coming for the internet. These websites, which once were major powers on the internet, are now being slowly taken apart. It will be interesting to see how this long developments unfolds, and if the legal system is able to truly eliminate these entities.
http://www.deadline.com/2013/03/hollywood-studios-score-appeals-court-win-in-copyright-case/
It was truly eye-opening today to hear Professor Sikand’s talk about copyright in the world of film, especially with the issue of the high costs associate with licensing music. What I found a bit saddening was the fact that these costs often dissuade filmmakers from making certain works. In a way, copyright in this case holding back the progression and evolution of film. Granted, we should protect artists and ensure that they do not lose out on revenue from their works. However, perhaps some efforts should be made to ease up on the rules regarding the usage of songs. After all, who knows what potentially great films the world could be missing out on because of all the restrictions in place?
In the discussion in today’s class, somebody brought up the topic of song sampling vs product placement, particularly in movies and in television. Some people argued that if companies pay directors and producers to have products featured in movies and shows, artists should do the same thing for the exposure they are getting. I didn’t get to speak on the issue, but my argument has to do with the purpose of such actions. When a song is included in a show or movie, it is usually intended to impart some sort of mod in the particular scene where it is seen. In a sense, the song ends up becoming a part of the show or movie as an art form, and several movies are known for the music featured in them. Product placement doesn’t do any of this, as is seen in the example video below with one of my favorite shows, Shark Tank. The T-Mobile product placement here is not only utterly ridiculous, it adds nothing to the show in terms of value or artistic merit. If there was no licensing deal made here, there is no reason that the producers of the show would include this in there at all. Essentially, even though having a song featured in a movie or show gives exposure to the artist, it is because the directors and producers want to use the songs to ad to their work that differentiates this from product placement.
In class when we were looking at the book Professor Phillips authored and all of the images that he had cleared I started to think about all of the image in my art history textbook. Do the publishers have to clear every image? In fact, I found this article about an art school that was forcing students to buy an image-less textbook for $180. The publishers of the textbook said that if they aquired all of the image rights the book would cost $800.An excerpt from the pictureless textbook: