Since I started taking this class, I have been thinking a lot about Bob Dylan. I have been a fan of Dylan most of my life, and am well aware that a great majority of his music from when he first started writing music in the early 1960s was based on other songs. This was often how folk music worked—artists would ‘borrow’ from other artists.

Dylan came to New York because his idol, Woody Guthrie, was dying in New Jersey and he wanted to meet him before he died. Woody was thrilled when Dylan played his music back to him, and was happy to have someone carry on his legacy. He even wrote a song in 1961 called “Song to Woody” which had an identical tune to Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”. He even took a line from another Guthrie song, “Pastures of Plenty” which said “Every state in this union, us migrants has been/We come with the dust and we go with the wind” and said “Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men/That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.”

Even some of Dylan’s more popular songs from that time were based on other songs and literature; “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall” (Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?) was based on the poem “Lord Randall”, which some of you may remember from Brit Lit in high school (Oh, where ha’ you been, Lord Randal my son? And where ha’ you been, my handsome young man).

It just amazes me how one of our great American legends would be in so much trouble today if he tried to do what he did in the 60s because of how the copyright laws presently are. We would be living in a world with no Bob Dylan!

Last semester I was studying abroad in China when I discovered China’s most popular search engine-Baidu.com. A little background information on Baidu-it is now proclaimed the third largest search engine in the world catering to a large internet audience with numerous services. However the one service that is struggling with other industries the most is its MP3 page, allowing people to search for free legal songs to download. It’s main feature is the comprehensive list of popular Chinese songs, shared by internet providers. China claims that this service does not infringe on any copyright laws, but since it also hosts popular international music, Baidu has been encountering issues with record labels such as Sony BMG and Warner Music. To us, it seems like the case would mean sure loss for Baidu since it hosts pirated music and encourages people to obtain music from there easily instead of buying the cds. However, the result of the case was actually global music labels losing to the lawsuit against Baidu.

In a quote stated by a representative of the International Federation of Phonographic “The verdicts do not reflect the reality that both operators have built their music search businesses on the basis of facilitating mass copyright infringement, to the detriment of artists, producers and all those involved in China’s legitimate music market.” However, Baidu is also working with record labels to share ad revenue and cooperating with these labels to fix the tension between the two parties.

Overall, there is still a lack of information offered by the press. It did not give more details as to how Baidu.com could have won this case-could it be simply that the Chinese law deems it okay? With such a censorship of information, it is hard to research more in-depth in regards to this case.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/164420/chinas_baidu_works_with_labels_on_music_downloads.html

When infringing upon someone’s copyright is it legitimate to claim “I didn’t know”? When I first read this story about a young woman who recorded some of Twilight: New Moon due to the fact that she was documenting her sister’s birthday party, I felt like she unequivocally infringed upon Twilight’s copyright. A crime is a crime. However, I realized that even in the case of murder, if someone can prove that they were insane at the time and didn’t know right from wrong, they could get a lesser sentence.

So how far can a “I didn’t know” defense go? In my opinion, this woman violated the copyright, but it should be fair use because she didn’t seek to distribute it and it was for her own personal enjoyment. Also, even though this probably isn’t legally correct I think there should be some leniency for cases like this. Copyright law is complicated and intricate and I think more ordinary citizens should be given the benefit of the doubt because of it.

Being a communications student interested in the music industry, I have had the opportunity to take on several internships–learning about all aspects of the business.  Over the summer I was lucky enough to experience my best internship to date at a Radio One radio station in Cleveland.  While working at my internship I began to hear a lot of talk about the Congressional hearings regarding the Performance Rights Act and exactly what this act was about.

I think this article about the Performance Rights Act and exactly what it is and how it effects both radio stations and record labels is extremely relevant to our copyrights class, especially after the discussion we had on Tuesday regarding downloading and what effects that has had on the business and how these losses can be reconciled.  In the article Kenneth Sanney gives a great description of what the act is about and what the positions are on the act.

Performance Rights Act

I am currently taking a course called “Introduction to Media Criticism” to complete my MCC minor. In class today, I was lucky enough to be the first student to present a class lecture. Our topic for the class was “Image, Power, and Politics”. The chapter comes from the textbook “The power Of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture”. The chapter was about how an image is produced, how we assign value to images, how technology has changed these values, and image icons. After the chapter, we were asked to read an article called, “On The Right of Molotov Man: The Appropriation and the art of context” by Joy Garnett and Susan Meislas (which can be found on our Delicious page). For the discussion in class, the point of the article was to talk about how when an image is taken out of context the meaning changes and also how artist’s intent can be changed because of the digital culture we live in.
The article is about an artist named Joy Garnett who started a project about “the human figure in extreme” and that the project was based out “frustration and anger”. Garnett’s process was to look for images on the computer that spoke to her. She then took these images and placed them in a folder on her desktop and let them sit, so she could forget where she found the images. After months of going through this process, she decided to picture her images. Her main prize image was of a man throwing a Molotov cocktail. This image became the main piece in the exhibition that was produced under this project and also the main painting for marketing and advertising. Garnett was contacted by a friend asking if Garnett knew that this image was from a photograph created by Susan Meisalas and if Garnett planned on contacting Meisalas about the use of the image. After the exhibit closed, Garnett received a letter from Meisalas’ lawyer claiming Garnett was “sailing under the flag of piracy”. The article continues with Garnett’s side of the story and then moves into Meiselas’ side of the story. Meiselas’ side of the story seems to show that she was more concerned about the fact that the struggle of the man in the photo and the context in which was taken was stripped away by Garnett using the image. I found it very interesting that Meisalas was not concerned about the monetary gain of the copyright infringement, but more about the credit that was necessary to the human in the image. I think that sometimes, our reason for producing art can be muddled by society’s ideologies based on money and monetary advances rather than the hopeful reason to produce art; to inspire and to create conversation. I was fascinated by the article and I hope you all are as well!

If you haven’t seen it yet, Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property is a great overview of the complexities, as well as the social and creative implications of copyright laws. This is a 6-minute clip of the documentary. I believe the library may have a copy of the DVD. Some of you may have seen “Killing me Softly 3″ (also produced by mef), along your academic journey (I’ve seen it in 3 classes).

More information on the Media Education Foundation (mef) <—- click there.

To watch the clip, click here —->  Freedom of Expression

For those of you who are interested in the intersection of technology and law, which includes a lot of IP but also issues like privacy and censorship, there’s a great calendar and mailing list for events in NYC run by a group of law students at nycinfolaw.org. The events are often at law schools, but don’t be intimidated; you already know more about IP than most non-IP lawyers and law students, and you might bring a valuable outside perspective.

Full disclosure, I co-founded the NYU branch of the group as a law student, but I have no involvement with them now.

Some of you have asked about the registration for delicious and the blog, so
I’m posting some instructions here to hopefully clarify it.

Step 1: register at delicious.com for an account and post a link with nyu_ccc as one of the tags.

Step 2: register an account on this blog; the link is under the Meta section at the bottom of the column on the right.

Post a comment here with any further questions and I’ll answer them for everyone.

The Goldstein reading for Thursday: Paul Goldstein, Copyright’s Highway, Chapter 1

Welcome to the Spring 2010 semester of Copyright, Commerce, and Culture. I hope you’ll all find this space as useful and interesting as its previous inhabitants. Please remember to register for the blog and post a link to delicious with our nyu_ccc tag.

Also, if you have a chance, on PBS tonight at 10PM is a documentary called Copyright Criminals which is by all accounts a fantastic look at the legal challenges to the sampling aesthetic in hip-hop. I will be trying to arrange a screening later in the semester, but just in case we end up seeing something else, I’d check it out tonight if you can.