Wk1: Blog Comment: Marcos Alvarez

@ Marcos

I am curious what you think of all this information on copyright law. I know I didn't think much of it (except to avoid stealing it) before watching this week's videos. However, after watching the video on what the copyright laws are doing to works that affect our history, I am disgusted. It just isn't right for that information of our country's past (good or bad) to be locked away and people wither forgetting about or never learning about it. This is what cause history to repeat itself.

For this week we had to watch some videos and read an article on the Obama picture of Hope. The first topic that we were presented with was copyright. This applies to everything that is produced whether it be books, plays, films, movies, dance and music. The copyright license lasts for the lifetime of its creator plus and additional 70 years. If it is a company owned copyright it lasts for 100 years. Because this is such a long time, the Faire Use concept entered into the picture. This brings us to the second topic of this week. Fair Use was developed so that material that is copyrighted can be used to a certain extent. It states that any copyrighted material can be used under four specific purposes. These are teaching, news report, parody and critical comment. This is not a right a person has but it can be utilized as a defensible position when and if a person is sued in court. The only conditions that are applied to fair use are that it be used under one o the four purposes previously stated, that the amount used is relatively short in comparison to the total, and that it have a commercial effect. This produces an outlet for creativity but it is flimsy at best since these parameters are not defined in specific terms and are open to interpretation. For this purpose Creative Commons, the third topic, was created. Creative Commons is a site in the Internet where you can publish whatever you want and you as the artist can define the parameters that will determine what can and cannot be done with your creation. They give the artist four option that they can apply to whatever they upload. The first option is Attribution, where if anybody wishes to use it they have to give credit to the artist. The second option is Non-Commercial, where the person can use it as long as they do not make a profit off of it. The third is No Derivates, which means that the creation has to remain exactly the same. Finally they have Share Alike, which states that you can make changes to the work but you have to keep the same options as the original artist.