TFW Fall 2011 Mod 2 Tumblr

LinkedIn outlines a “Do and Don’t section” for users to comply.  The “Do’s” are simple: provide accurate information that follows all of the policies, and act professional.  The “Don’t’s” span at least 30 items, all detailing different ways you cannot use the content of LinkedIn.  While some of these are expected, like creating a fake profile with false information, or creating viruses for the sight and transmitting them to other users, some of them caught me off guard.  One of these was “adding content to a field that is not intended for such a field”, meaning users can’t post phone numbers or emails or the like in subject headings.  A lot of the “Don’t’s” also deal with copying some of the content or design of LinkedIn’s sight.  I suppose many users will try anything.

LinkedIn acknowledges that users own the information they post, and use user information to help enhance the sight. They also do whatever else they please with your content, such as publishing or removing it, and users have already agreed to it.  They do what they want with the content.  But it’s yours. 

Ok so I’ve made it halfway through the Doctumentary “RIP! A Remix Manifesto” and I needed to stop and make a post. Yes, I think that it is copyright infringement when you use a long section of a song without permission. But the song that plays in the scene where Marybeth Peters (the registrar of copyrights) is watching the mashup video and calling it copyright infringement does not even sound like the original song! The song that Girl Talk makes does not sound anything like “Radio” by Elvis Costello. He only uses second long clips. That’s maybe one or two notes per sound bite. You cannot copyright single notes or else no one would be able to play music legally. How many times have the same phrases been spoken? Can I copyright the word “Hello” and get royalties every time someone greets another person? No, that would be ridiculous. By the way, I owe Warner/Chappell a lot of money because we sing “Happy Birthday” at Outback all the time. Unless of course, my boss pays Warner/Chappell to let us sing it. Which in my opinion is equally ridiculous. Warner/Chappell did not even write the song! How many artists have copied each other? Listen to “Straight to Hell” by the Clash vs. “Paper Planes” by MIA. Or “Girl Next Door” by Jane’s Addiction vs. “You Belong with Me” by Taylor Swift. Or how about “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd vs. “All Summer Long” by Kid Rock? These songs have similar sounds and yet they are not considered illegal.

I found the readings and videos for this week to be incredibly interesting. Each article or video guided its reader/viewer in the development and depiction of copyright in modern culture. As human beings, most thrive off of creativity, originality and uniqueness. We want to express ourselves through the creative process- including art, writing, music, etc. One particular focus of the readings was on the relationship between copyright and music. Our desire to create original product, as well as build, modify and transform the works of others is a prominent aspect in music. The explosion of re-mixing traditional songs and sharing a love for music and artists over the internet has diminished because copyright laws have defined this activity as “illegal.”

I find the relationship between copyright laws, artistic expression and sharing over the internet to be somewhat contradictory. Although the copyright laws may restrict one’s sharing of ideas and transformation of traditional artwork or songs, it is one of the only forms of protection for the artist, themselves. My brother is an artist, a graphic designer and lover of music. He has published his artwork on his website (with the appropriate copyright, of course) to ensure that an individual cannot steal his original work and claim it as their own. On the other hand, my brother is constantly sharing new music with his friends through websites such as spotify.com. My brother serves as a primary example of the contradiction manifested within this relationship. While he is willing to share and trade music online, and willing to share his artwork with the world (as long as he is protected by law), he is not willing to allow his artwork to be “stolen”, transformed or experimented with. 

 ;)

I found this video very interesting.  I liked the way the video was composed and how it illustrated how interactive our computers have become.  I found it interesting how the switch from HTML to XML facilitated our interaction with the Internet, allowing people who could not understand code to be able to upload content to the Internet. Without this switch, I would not be able to post this or tweet or upload videos.  I never knew this before.

Also, I found the titular concept of “the machine is us/ing us” to be absolutely intriguing. This made me think of Marshall McLuhan’s prediction of “the global village” and how we would soon be so immersed in this technology that it would invariably become a part of us. I remember discussing this in Communication Theory and then being constantly aware of how our technology is getting us closer and closer to that point.

Finally, I found the final point of the video to be very interesting, that Web 2.0 forces us to rethink our ideas of copyright, authorship, identity, etc. I have seen evidence of this a lot on the Internet, especially when videos are removed due to copyright issues. Also, sites like Facebook, where users can have hundreds of “friends” that they might not actually know, has made all its users - and our culture as a whole - completely rethink its definition of “friends”.