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
Some Rights Reserved
Great clip. “This is not just some abstract, legal stuff that’s going on. The reason people should care about this is that they live now in a digital world. They live in a world that is in fact made up of copyright images and their own rights to free expression are going to be restricted unless those freedoms are defended in some way.” What constitutes as copyright infringement is not so black and white anymore, so absolute. Happy Birthday, for example, is a song that is sung multiple times every day, and I feel like using it in movies should be considered fair use since it can actually help show what it is like to grow up and live in America. It is a song that belongs to all of us at this point. However, I don’t totally agree with everything that was said, such as that “they don’t have the right to stop you using their materials,” because I think some people should have that right, especially when someone’s materials are not well-known enough to be automatically attributed to them when someone else uses them. It’s hard to decide what is absolutely right and absolutely wrong when it comes to copyrighting, and each case has to be considered individually.
That’s a really interesting point about Happy Birthday, and it reminds me of Jon Pareles’ proposal of songs being “ransomed” into the public domain by their fans after selling some large number of copies. Would that feel fair to you guys, or would you agree with the president of the National Music Publisher’s Association that it’s “outrageously regressive”? What does he mean by regressive, and is it necessarily a bad thing?
I can’t recall if they even touch on it in this clip, but the movie (again, around an hour in entirety) touched on Arlo Guthrie’s “This Land is Our Land.” It’s effectively a melody horked from an earlier song. But Arlo’s version of it is ubiquitous. Ubiquitousness should have some form of exclusion or allowance. The documentary touches on both sides — pros/cons.
Of course, the documentary presents the argument decidedly against the extension of copyright law. That said, they are very clear about by copyright is essential to the creative-cultural process.
Looks like a great documentary; I think Kembrew’s book of the same name is fantastic, and I came very close to making y’all buy it.
Also worth noting that Kembrew is the writer and co-producer of the Copyright Criminals doc that we’ll be discussing in a couple of weeks, which is a more focused look at the practice and implications of sampling in hip-hop.
I posted a link about the copyright on the song “Happy Birthday to you” which was mentioned in this thread. It was rumored it was suppose to expire in 2010, but this article tells an extension was made for an additional 20 years in 1998. The article also refers you to ASCAP where you would seek a license to publicly perform the song. The same organization is refrenced on page 55 of Goldstein if you want more background on it.
Now that I think about it, it was Jon Pareles’ proposal that made me think to say that about Happy Birthday. I feel like at this point, having a copyright on Happy Birthday is not to “promote the progress of science and useful art by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writing and documents”, which copyright is intended for, but purely for money. It’s like the National Anthem! (where the piece of music is public domain, though the performance can be copyrighted, apparently )
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