Some of you might have heard of Nina Pailey.
After being dumped by a former significant other via e-mail, she decided to get over her disappointment creatively, by making a movie called Sita Sings the Blues.
The interesting part of this movie is its license. Released under a Creative Commons Attributions-Share Alike License,it permits free download and distribution of the movie. However it prohibits the use of DRM and profiting of the movie. This is an interesting case, basically the contrary of what we are used to by big media corporations.

Even more interesting is her latest Youtube video, “All work is creative”. I highly suggest you watch the video (http://blog.ninapaley.com/2010/02/09/all-creative-work-is-derivative/) to get an idea of her claim. Switching through different artwork, Ms. Pailey not only juxtaposes, but shows how similar pieces can be. This theory would bring a complete new discussion into the realms of copyright law.

If every work would be derivative, thousands of lawsuits could be filed and certainly not all be accused under fair use.
What do you think about her claim?

This was an interesting article I found when I was looking for a fair use case. It hasn’t yet been brought to court and I’m not sure it ever will be. But here is what happened: Lisa Jack took a series of photographs of Barak Obama in 1980 when they went to school together. They were never published or formally exhibited until recently. In 2008 the photographs were used in Time Magazines “ 2008 Person of the Year” issue. Sense then, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law (NORML) appropriated one of the pictures in 2009 for an annual conference poster. One of the photos Jack took showed Obama smoking a cigarette. NORML digitally altered the photo to show Obama smoking a blunt with the caption “Yes We Canabis” written at the top. The posters were handed out to attendees and are also available for purchase on the web ($15-25). So the question is whether or not this is considered fair use. NORML never received permission to use the photograph. However, the intended use, which was obviously transformative, makes the infringement somewhat acceptable. Personally, I was wondering if the poster is considered slanderous to Obama’s reputation, and if so, how does that affect NORML’s case for fair use.

Here is the link for the article: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2009/08/rs-norml5.html

And this is a link showing the photos Jack took: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1866765_1815160,00.html

A recent Mashable article informed me of a lobby group called The International Property Alliance that wants the US government to put countries that advocate or use open use software on a watch list of enemies of capitalism. What is interesting to me about this article is not how outrageous the groups claim is, but how (at least for some) there appears to be a natural link between strict copyright laws and capitalism and lenient laws and communism. Yes, open source software is likely to make less money and have creators who are less interested in making a lot of money than software that is sold and copyright protected. But doesn’t open source seem to come out of the “marketplace of ideas” as much as anything else? Whether it be open source or more traditional software, they are still competing with one another and hopefully the best software will be the most popular in the end.