Sunday, June 3, 2012

MAC WK 1 Blog Response to Valencia Winston


Valencia,

You bring quite a few interesting concepts to the table. Other countries view many financial issues differently than the United States. I agree with you, this country is uptight and really needs a massage on their thinking. This country is built upon a non-class system that allows everyone the opportunity to rise from poor to rich. On the flip side, I agree with you that this country has too much of a focus on making money and doing anything, including stepping over your most loved family member, to get there. You also make a great point about historical content that is used to educate or children and adults. What if that content was copyrighted? As educators, we would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to access the content. At least within the United States, educators are given permission, typically in writing, to reproduce materials to work with children or adults in the mindset of educating others about the content.

I really enjoyed this week’s reading assignment, because I love the intricate business side of the entertainment industry. I found it so interesting that laws that were meant to protect an artist from others making money from their work, has a flip side that constricts artists from creatively producing work.  May favorite videos dealt with the ways other countries view copyright. Brazilian and Nigerian artists are not engrossed in the moneymaking elements of entertainment, as much as they are interested in purely entertaining. What was illustrated was that the corporate world in America, which is the driving force behind the copyright laws, are consumed by this “bottom line” kind of thinking, and milking every possible penny out of consumers. This kind of greed-based mentality shows up throughout America’s financial institutions, and results in the rot that drives piracy and theft.  The best example of this was the Bridgeport V Dimension Film/Music case against Hip Hop recording artists De La Soul. While Jane Peterer was right that the sample had been used, the sample was not used in the same way as the original artist created it.  In my opinion, this made the song “Me, Myself and I” a new creation. The same is true for NWA’s “One Hundred Miles and Running.” Moreover, the original artist Parliament and Funkadelic, was not even quoted in the story.

When considering these laws, in the realm of education, it becomes even more ridiculous. Every generation is taught the world around them. Imagine if ancient pyramid inscriptions, drawings, and statues were copyrighted. How many centuries of learners would have been deprived of learning and interpreting the meanings of the artwork? I believe that this example illustrates how ridiculous these laws are.  If copyright laws had existed in the past for 100 years + 70, how many generations before us would have been neglected? I look forward to more study on these issues.

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