Sunday, June 3, 2012

MAC WK 1 Blog Reading Entry


This week’s content is based upon copyright. Copyright is a legal concept that has been developed to protect intellectual property. Intellectual property is any expressed idea or information that has been patented, trademarked or turned into a trade secret. Having a degree in film has taught me many things about copyright. Typically, people want to protect their music, art, curriculum, poetry, and architectural design. Unless you have visual proof, you cannot claim copyright. Usually, people will videotape their dance, skit, or play in order to have visual proof that they have copyright or at least rights to the intellectual property of what they created. The music industry is highly volatile at this time. Technology provides access to so much that allows people to take intellectual property off of the internet and manipulate it to make new musical combinations. Creators are taking pieces form different copyrighted material and developing new material. There will need to be a balance created in order to maintain peoples’ intellectual property as we progress technically.

2 comments:

  1. David,

    Your comfort with the details of the copyright laws was evident in your post. You refreshed the parts of the law that I failed to mention in my post that are extremely important to understanding it. They taught you well in your film degree. I agree with you on the present volatility of the music industry. There are so many samples being used to day that it is hard to see where the creativity is being displayed. With that said, I can appreciate some of the samples because they are bringing back great music that would be lost. One place where I feel copyright is doing an injustice is documentaries. It was alarming to see all of the black history documentaries that can no longer be viewed because of copyright laws. I mean really, $15,000 for one verse of "Happy Birthday", give me a break.

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  2. Great overview of the issues and problems. It is a volatile situation indeed. It will be interesting to see how the next generation works through this problem.

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