I thought we had a great conversation in class today. Something I wanted to expand on in this blog post is the point that was brought up by buying the license to show a movie to the public.  I think it is amazing how companies can charge hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for a movie to be shown legally to a public audience, but I can go to the DVD store or go on iTunes and buy a movie for a fraction of that price and watch it over and over again.  Would it be legal if I had a bunch of friends over (10 people) and watch a movie.  Would that situation change if I were to watch a movie and invite all of my closest friends over (200-300 people)? I would even let my dog watch.

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On an unrelated note, I am going to try to post a video of “Microwave This!” after each of my blog posts. Enjoy! What will happen to a bag of chips in the microwave? Find out here!

What is the difference between an imitation and a copy?  How far can an imitation go before it is considered copyright infringement?  Would it still be considered copyright infringement if the imitation was altered by culture?

This article by Hariqbal Basil titled “Indianizing Hollywood: The Debate Over Copyright Infringement by Bollywood” tackles some of these questions.  According to the author, some popular Hollywood films are reinterpreted by Bollywood to be more “Indianized” for Hindi audiences.  According to the author, these films may “be liable for copyright infringement if the subsequent film is found to be substantially similar to the initial copyrighted work” (Basil 35).  As a highly successful industry, do you believe Bollywood should pay the companies they are borrowing from?  Or is theirs not a form of copyright infringement due to the intention?

Dr. Sikand’s discussion of her documentary on PBS led me to another PBS documentary, Copyright Criminals (2010).  This film discusses many of the topics we have covered in class, such as fair use and sampling.  The filmmakers, Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod, said in an interview that, “this movie could not have been made and distributed without a legal doctrine called fair use.”  While a film like this has the potential to be educational and useful, is it fair that multiple recording companies were not paid for the use of their songs in the documentary?  Do you think that there should be a different standard for documentaries and big-budget Hollywood films?

During my research of films and music copyright, I stumbled on this essay written by a Yale Law School student.  Interestingly enough, the essay appears on a blog similar to ours, with comments from the author’s peers at the bottom of the webpage.  The author, Christina Mulligan, discusses how copyright is ignored in the popular show, Glee.  The characters often create mash-ups of preexisting songs, perform covers, and even make direct copies of music videos.  The show ignores the issue of copyright completely while, in reality, copyright lawsuits occur all the time.  According to Mulligan, the students of Glee would be on the losing side of a copyright lawsuit for their work.  Mulligan asserts that students who actually do this are doing so “to learn about themselves, to become better musicians, to build relationships with friends, and to pay homage to the artists who came before them” (Mulligan).

What do you think?  Should excuses be made for students in copyright law?  Do these excuses already exist?

Today’s class discussion was really interesting. It made me look more deeply into the issue of multiple ways to cite. I came across this funny article discussing how to simplify the many different ways into one universal system which the author calls the “author-year” system. Honestly, I agree with the author of this article. All we really need is the author, the year, and the type of source it is. All of these different ways to cite have just got way out of control.

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It seems like change could happen in the future for copyright law. It is refreshing to see that the head of the Copyright Office acknowledges the fact that the system has some issues. I am not surprised that this is going to take a great deal of time to fix things but you cannot expect such an overhaul to happen over night. I also didn’t realize how many stakeholders this could potentially affect.

The brown bag today was incredibly interesting and insightful. I
never thought about what was on the TV when filming or what song could be heard
in the background. There are so many elements that I feel we as viewers take for
granted. The clip we saw about the Texas Two Step and getting permission to show
that was also interesting. It was a group of people dancing but contacting the
original creator was necessary in order to get permission and show the clip.

As I mentioned earlier in the week I am the president of the radio station
on campus. I have taken a lot of music from CD’s that I have found and
downloaded it to my iTunes. I know of at least 30 other people that have done this even though it is technically illegal. I know that the number of people taking the work impacts whether or not it is a problem. I have thought about how much money has been taken from the artist by all of us downloading the entire album from sharing the CD. Assuming 50 people have downloaded the CD over the years and saying the album costs $7.99 on iTunes that is $399.50 that the artist and associates did not see. At that point the music isn’t just being used for personal use but there is nobody to enforce it. I do feel kind of bad for what I have done but it isn’t going to stop me because there is basically no way of getting accused of stealing music.

Today in the brown bag, we learned that there are different websites that have free music available for producers and directors to use in their videos. I found this extremely interesting, so I decided to look into one of these websites. When searching the internet, I found the Free Music Archive. The Free Music Archive is a portal for producers to find free music for their videos. I looked around the website a little bit and explored some of the music. A lot of the music on the Free Music Archive was really strange, but there were some really great songs. I found this website to be a great idea for both the producers looking for music and the artist looking to get their music out there. It is interesting how artist just place their work out there in hopes of having someone use it. It is also interesting to think that a producer has the potential to make one of these artist famous by using their work. I think this is a great example of how copyright laws can be worked around and be used to an artist advantage.

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