The brown bag today was extremely interesting. I thought it was interesting to learn that a person doing a documentary would have to get writes for a song that just happened to be playing in the background. Hearing this made me really dislike our copyright laws. Although I understand why artist and producers would do this, I feel like this part of copyright has come to a bit of an extreme. Many directors can not predict a car passing by playing a song, yet they will get punished for having the music in their movie. I wish there was a way to work around this in our many copyright laws to protect these directors.

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.