Response to Week 6

This week I decided to respond to another student’s questions:

How can the line of “fair use” and “theft” be better defined?

I think this is the biggest problem with copyright law — the difference between fair use and theft is so ambiguous.  There is a large variety of shady rules that justify whether or not you are implementing fair use.  For example, it is fair use based on “the nature of the copyrighted work”, or “the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole”.  Neither of these are definite.  In order to make them more definite they need to have specific stipulations:  It is fair use if you use 20 seconds of a 3 minute video, 30 seconds of a 4 minute video, 40 seconds of a five minute video, etc.  The “nature” of the copyrighted material is also difficult to define.  If they come up with more specific guidelines for the “nature” it would be easier for students like us to avoid accidental copyright infringement.

With all the shadiness in the copyright law and those who I feel abuse the law by  overusing those of us who are simply using music or art to convey our own art to others in a new expression, what could be created to create the balance between art , artists, and new media expression of art and artist’s work.

I believe you are talking about how copyrighted material is so accessible now because of new media.  It is definitely becoming an issue; people are posting their pictures online, and others are using them in their own works without permission from the original artist.  We all do it.  This is obviously a minor example of copyrighted infringement but what about people who are stealing music through P2P networks, then creating and selling their own remix with this music?  In order to control this, something needs to change.  It is crazy to say that we should stop all P2P sharing, that is a part of music that will never change.  However, maybe they could implement a new law that allows people to create their own remix’s as long as they download the music from the original artist.  Each artist could have their own “buying page” that allows you to buy a song (say $0.99 each) and as long as you get the material from there, you can do anything you want with it.  Then the artist is getting paid AND you get to use their music as you please, everyone wins!

Why and how would this change in rules or laws change our sources of media as interactive designers?

If this new way of working with music was actually implemented, I think it would save a lot of heart ache for both artists and designers.  Rather than going through months or even years of copyright law, they could simply go onto the artists website, buy the music there and not have to worry about copyright.  This new way of working could be implemented with all sorts of material too (pictures, writing, etc.).  I think that P2P sharing will always be a problem, but if this new law would make it easier for people to not have to worry about copyright infringement by simply buying the music, life for designers, remixers, etc. would be much easier