I thought the TED video about copyright was very interesting.
It made me think of my freshman year of college when my brother posted his first youtube video. He sent me the link, and I was totally impressed considering he was only 13 at the time and had very limited means to make a video.
It was a video of him singing Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.” He put all of the video clips of himself together and then played the song over it. He did a really good job of making his lips sync up with the song lyrics.
At the time, I just thought it was something cute my brother had made. Now, I realize, he was probably infringing on some copyright laws. Larry Lessig made this point in the video… These copyright laws are strangling the creativity of our children.
My brother never got in trouble for copyright. He took the video down after a while (I still have it on my Ipod though. Its fun to watch when I’m having a bad day, usually helps put me in a better mood).
The thing that scares me about it is that I didn’t even think about it at the time. I’m usually pretty good about that stuff since I’m a writer and I’m studying journalism.
Our journalism class recently discussed copyright, plagiarism, and (the biggest part of our talk) libel. Sometimes, especially with the Internet, it’s hard to tell when you’re doing something for which somebody could sue you.
While I believe these laws need to be reconsidered in order to take the Internet and what it affords into account, I don’t know that that will happen anytime soon. With technology moving so quickly, by the time the laws are revised, it’ll be time to revise them again. I guess for now I just need to remember to be careful about what I post and what I use on websites online…
And over in law schools, they’re discussing the same sorts of problems. The Constitution gives us “freedom of speech,” but what counts as “speech” anymore?