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?

As of yesterday the United States patten system has switched from the old “first to invent” patent system to a more modern “first to file” system. This article gives concise and easy to understand explanation of what this means for the patent system. It is interesting that until yesterday, the US was one of the only countries operating under the old system. How do you think, if at all, this will effect inventors and their inventions?

With the implementation of the new  “6 Strike” system, it seems that the war on piracy is the new war on drugs. But is that really an effective way to fight piracy? A recent article has likened these attempts to curb piracy to the war on drugs. However, history has shown us that “prohibition” has never worked. When alcohol was made illegal from 1920-1933, the black market and organized crime exploded, it was shown that when people believe they have a right to something; nothing anyone can say or do will stop them. Even more recently, with the War on Drugs, we can see that prohibition simply does not work and now the same tactic is being used on modern copyright infringement.

So why does this tactic continually resurface?