This week we tackled the topic of the fair use policy and the blockers that certain artists and producers put on their music when it is used in other peoples content. I think this whole thing is just so petty on the artists point of view. You would really think that these old artists would want a revamp of popularity, because the people who listen to their music are quite literally dying off and the ones that are alive, like the ones that are our parents age, might not even be on Spotify or any streaming services.

One of the most prominent cases of this is the YouTuber Rick Beato. We watched a couple of his videos this week and I found it very interesting on his experiences. He says that almost all of his videos are demonetized and make no money. That is not even the worst of it that he will get from these artists. This makes me mad even not knowing the guy, but knowing how much work he puts into his videos. The worst is when they full on block his videos from even being posted and people seeing them. I just don’t get the appeal and need ro do this to a guy who is quite literally promoting your content.

In his latest videos he talks about the new TikTok trend where people ride a skateboard or a long board and drink cranberry juice to the song Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Just typing that was funny but this is 2020. But the point is that even the different song writers in the same band have different philosophies on whether to block a song from YouTube. Earlier in the year he created one of his videos for a series “what makes this song great”. This video got immediately blocked and taken off YouTube, but the thing was it was made by Fleetwood Mac (go your own way). At the time he thought oh they are just one of those bands that blocks people from making content about them. But when this new trend came about with the new trend with the song Dreams he started to wonder why his video got blocked and that didn’t. The reason is that Lindsey Buckingham write go your own way, and Stevie Dix wrote Dreams. Buckingham blocks songs and Dix does not.

This week we also looked at the streaming site Napster where people used to get their music online without paying for it, and depending on you ask, illegally. Now I am not in favor of this type of site at all. I am happy to pay my 10 dollars a month for a legal ethical streaming service. I think these artists need to make their fair share for what they put out, and the hard work that they put into to making, writing, and producing these songs. I think sites like this are ripping off these people and taking advantage of the system that can give us some great content.

Check out this article about the town hall meetings: https://apnews.com/article/town-hall-trump-biden-nbc-abc-b3b8d0b68e7c4628b095d082cd5a1a7e

The Fair Use Doctrine states that in order for a work to be considered fair use, it must contain:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not by itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. 

A parody of a song is a new work that has very little restriction.  If the parody has a different audience than the original song, then most of the original work may be borrowed.  Such as the parody of “What What in the Butt” from South Park.  They were able to use it because a different audience was viewing it other than the original musical audience of the singer, Samwell.  According to the doctrine, a parody must criticize the original work. 

In the South park episode, Butters recreated an internet song that Samwell had sung in real life and posted on You-Tube.  It received over 41 million views.  Brownmark Films sued Comedy Central and Viacom but it was overturned when they argued that it was a parody and fell under the Fair Use doctrine.  The creators of South Park argued that they were simply making fun of society and the recent craze of watching low income artistry and videos that were being uploaded to You-Tube.

Napster was the high profile copyright infringement case of the 1990’s.  Shawn Fanning started the program Napster, a programmer and hacker started in 1998. It was using an algorithm to download music in the form of an mp3.  People were uncertain whether downloading music was copyright infringement or the right of the people to be able to download the music of their favorite artists.  Bands like Metallica sued Napster because they felt that the music belonged to the artist.  Eventually, Napster was ordered to remove millions of songs owned by the record labels.  After Napster came music subscriptions like Apple I-Tunes and Spotify.  Napster was the game-changer and really shook the music industry.  They had never had to defend this sort of copyright infringement and they weren’t ready for it. 

A viewpoint that I found interesting in the article, Yes, Copyright’s Sole Purpose Is To Benefit The Public, is that there is a clause in the copyright law that says that the purpose does not lie in the artist’s ability to benefit from the creation – the purpose is “to promote the progress of science.”   This is the first time I have heard this and maybe I am not fully understanding it, but it raises the question of whether or not there is an expiration date on an artist’s content?  The article states that nowhere does it state in the copyright law that its purpose is to benefit the creator. 

Question:  Do you feel that an artist should be able to hold copyright over their work indefinitely or should it eventually belong to the public?

Works Cited:

10 April 2012. Masnik, Mike. Yes, Copyright’s Sole Purpose is to Benefit the Public  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120407/00171418416/yes-copyrights-sole-purpose-is-to-benefit-public.shtml

Downloaded:  Napster Documentary, Google Drive

Fair Use Doctrine https://printing.wsu.edu/copyright/

13 July, 2011 Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/south-park-wins-lawsuit-what-210849

This week the topic is about copyrights, piracy and fair use. We read the articles “”South Park wins Lawsuit over  “What what in the Butt” Parody”” and the other article called ” Yes, Copyright’s Sole Purpose is to Benefit the Public.” We also watched a documentary called Napster Documentary  which was a very interesting documentary. In the video documentary, it talks about Napster and how it was for unauthorization sound recording. People stated that they cannot afford to pay 16 dollars for a CD so instead they turn to Napster. The program quickly spread like wildfire and soon everyone was using this program. People don’t view it as stealing because it is the songs they like and are interested in. The documentary stated that millions of people used this site to swap music files off of each other’s computers for free. No one anticipated that people would be willing to share their hard drive with other people..the thought of it was absurd however people were doing just that and it opened up a whole new realm. 

Going over to the South Park lawsuit article, it talks about how they were sued over an episode in which the character Butters recreated an internet video sensation from the singer Samwell. Samwell had a really big hit with that song and got millions of views with it. According to the article, Viacom claimed it was a parody and fell squarely within “fair use ” exceptions to copyrights. Viacom ended up winning this lawsuit due to the fact that it was less than. minute in a 25 minute episode and made the video even more outrageous than the original so it indeed was in fair use. I just feel as though people are getting out of control with these copyrights suing.. even if you have something in the background of a video they could take down your video due to “copyrights’.. frankly it’s annoying and absurd and needs to be taken down a notch. 

The second article is ” Yes, Copyrights sole purpose is to Benefit the public,” and it talks about the actual sole purpose and background behind the copyrights. It states that it is for the author first and the nation second. It also states the clause ” To promote the progress of science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and inventors and exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” So initially it was not for other kinds of creativity and it is supposed to benefit the public instead. With this whole article I feel as though I need to go back a few times to really understand because I never really thought much about copyrights because I don’t post videos often and things like that, however, it is a topic and issue that has gone overboard like I said before. 

Below is an article that gives many examples as to who was impacted by copyrights and how and the new regulations that the supreme passed for it. You now have to get a copyright registration before suing for a copyright and it could take up to years.

https://www.intellectualpropertynews.com/copyright-news/

Copyright is a thing people of this generation has to deal with and it is so annoying. Imaging being on youtube and people can use audio or vidoe that they dont own just for entertainment purposes. It would make thing a lot less serious and fun.  If you watch youtube the way I do, you would constantly hear some say something along the lines “ let me turn this off I dont want to get copyrighted”. What I find suprizing about Napster Documentary ‘Downloaded’ is that you see teens in college find a problem and try to make it easier for more people like him get access to music and it came with consequence that landed them with a lawsuit. Napster was close to destroying the music industry becosue people were getting access to music and downloading them for free. Music has a place in everyones heart but  being about to access without having to pay for it was a luxury. Their was process to downloading the music but it was worth it. All the Seans wanted to do was help people get access to music but it was affecting the artist who make the music because they get to listen to the music for free instead of paying for it and the artist its self gets profit from it because making music is a job in a way. Once Napster closed, people found new ways to get free music. Napster was a start to something new until they found a way to stop people from getting free music and I think the change in the technology made it easier for people pay for music instead of for free. The first itunes to come out was very similar to the foundation of Napster even if they would not admit it. The Napster lawsuit was a eye opener for people. It was unfortunate. 

  The article “Yes, Copyright’s Sole Purpose Is To Benefit The Public“ states that “when originally written, the “science” part was directed at copyright, and it really meant “learning.” Going back to the original intent, it most certainly was not created to cover all kinds of creativity — but certainly the law has changed over time.” This sucks because now most creative platforms are targeted because of the rules of copyright. They have people that jobs are to sit down and track down people that don’t have using audio or footage they don’t own. Its annoying but I understand because you should make profit off your creations you took time to make and invent. 

On a more serious note…………………

Weekly news: People are in need of help as the pandemic is still happening. Not everyone is able to go back to work and make money.  People needed help to make ends meet as the prices of thing increase due to profit they have lost while we were in quarantine. The country that everyone dreams to come to is struggling the most to help its citizens.

https://www.newsweek.com/progressive-democrats-demand-stimulus-relief-now-after-pelosi-rejects-wh-deal-gop-focuses-1539205

The internet has become a very big and vast space where you can find just about anything you want. In the U.S. there really is about no limits for what you can find on the internet ranging from cat memes to political information to porn. The internet really is the greatest source of information and pleasure that you will find right at the tips of your fingers. This is not the case for all places though. When you go to places like China, Egypt, and many other countries where there freedom of speech is limited. These countries are most of the time always looking to block an sort or activism that will cause there government to collapse and the people in power to fall out of power. This is all talked about in the article “The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism” where the author talks about how the internet works and how to best create activism and how some places are trying to stop it. He talks about how the internet started as a place for people to share research papers and things of that nature but quickly has become a place to allow for people to share cute cat pictures. Now while a lot of the internet now has become memes there is still a lot of important information and activist that use it do get their cause out there and then get support.

He also talks about the best way to know if your website is getting to the masses is first you see porn being posted and shared then to know you’ve made it big activist start to make post. The porn idea also ties a little bit into this weeks book review about sexting. Even though the book focused on the idea of consent and sexting of younger teens and how its become more and more popular so does porn and things of that nature. Now with teens it really comes down do you trust that person to keep those things private and to their eyes only. Then as adults you should always keep that type of stuff private cause your old enough and mature enough to do so and know the effects of stuff like that getting out but when you are younger you don’t really think about those types of things. I think todays culture and thoughts towards things like sex work and people using there bodies to make money has changed dramatically and with sites like only fans you see a lot more post that could be considered porn to promote or just put online because people will share just about anything now a days. I think this is way porn is usually a good assessment of making it on a small scale because people wouldn’t post those sorts of things if they didn’t know that it was going to get view and shared by tons of people to either help them gain followers or just get noticed by more people. The next comes the activist which a lot of that goes hand in hand with cancel culture that we talked about a few weeks ago and just how big that has become and how they will get there word out anywhere they can that has a big audience for views and then shares on top of that. So once you get these two pretty big crowds of people you are doing a pretty good job. I think all of this can be seen on Twitter which really went through these steps and has really taken off as a social media platform these last couple of years. Then you have people that just make there own memes where they share just about anything that make ranging from animals to just funny pictures with just about anything on them.

Another article we read this week “10 Twitter Hashtags that Changed the way we Talk About Social Issues” which talks about different hashtags that were used and how many times they we used. The top three hashtags were #Ferguson with 27,200,000, #LoveWins with 12,800,000 and #BlackLivesMatter with 12,000,000. These were all very big issues but all very different from one another and just shows you how much activism is happening on twitter and how many different people have used just those 3 hashtags. Have you participated in using any of these 3 hashtags or any of the others mentioned in the article?

News Article:

This article is a fact check and also talks about different things that were talked about during the Vice Presidential Debate held last week on October 7th.

This week in class we went over many articles and videos of social issues that are happening right now as we speak. Going from racial justice to social issues and the involvement technology has had in it. Technology has always been there, it’s always been advancing and making our lives easier, but at what cost? If you really look at it, technology has made things more difficult than easy for people. Especially on social media with twitter, facebook, and instagram, you see this censorship and suppression of opinions because people just don’t agree with what you have to say. Even though social media was intended for us to spread ideas and give way to issues that needed to be talked about, it has yet been able to provide that platform. It’s not social medias fault, but instead our own faults for turning it into something it never should had been. For example hashtag’s were supposed to be used to show awareness of social issues and has now turned into sarcasm and trolling to see who will lose it on someone first. It’s like we are intentionally trying to egg people on just to get a reaction out of them, making issues that were small at first in to big ones. I think some people just find satisfaction in starting controversy and creating that hostile environment because they know no one is going to stop them.

An article called “THE DIGITAL CULTURESHIFT: MOVING FROM SCALE TO POWER TO ACHIEVE RACIAL JUSTICE” was one of the articles we had to read this week. The article went over race, technology, and movements for Native voices, Black lives, Muslim rights, migrant power, and racial justice in the 21st century. Now these are all very important topics of social issues and although this article was written in 2016, the problems that were happening then are still happening now. Such as the protesting involving George Floyd and other African Americans who were wrongfully killed by police officers. Now not only was the this situation met on a social media level, but also started a new form of the civil rights movement. We would all see tweets and posts about it on facebook and see the protests being done in states around the country. Now I believe that social media did help get the word out about these wrongful deaths being done by police officers using too much force, but I also believe that because of social media it also turned everyone against each other. Forcing people to take sides on whether or not police are all bad or only certain ones are. Some may even say it divided us as a country, turning into a war of sorts over on social media.

This sort of movement shouldn’t divide the American public but rather bring them together. Peoples strong views on social media have helped to divide the American public and create a divide within the country. Instead, the public should be coming together and understanding each-others views. This use of social media to voice strong opinions and start online fights has led to a strong divide within this country.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/politics/trump-gretchen-whitmer-law-and-order/index.html

This article is about Over the summer, as racial justice demonstrations swept through American cities, president Donald Trump warned he would wield the powers of government to suppress violence. Embracing a law and order mantle, Trump himself announced from the East Room a surge of federal agents and castigated groups such as Black Lives Matter as cultivating hate.

This week we seen the use of digital activism in many forms like from the book group 2 presented on Wednesday and learned more about digital activism through the TED Talk with Zeynep Tufekci and the article on the Washington Post. All of these works are people using their platforms to campaign for change in social aspects. We have seen people using social media, literature, and protest.

Sexting Panic seemed to be a very interesting book. From hearing group 2 present it was a clear use of activism. The author Amy Adele Hasinoff is an activist. Hasinoff is clearly making us recognize a clear social issue that is trying to make teens unable to express themselves. Sexting is bound to happen at a young age because of the things young people are exposed to nowadays. The book reminds us of laws that are unjust that the person whose privacy was invaded has to pay the price. Instead of trying to punish people for things they will ultimately end up doing in life they should punish the people who expose them. Sexting is the sending of explicit messages and images through text. Everyone is free to do many things in their life and this is one. If someone wants to send their partner something explicit that is their right to do. If the recipient leaks those photos they are in the wrong and the person who sent the photo does not deserve to be punished. If we punish the leakers instead it will be a better resolution to the problem. What people send them should stay private unless both people want it to be spread. The wrong people are being punished for something that is out of their control.

The TED Talk was a description of the effects of online activism and other forms. She feels online activism does not how that long lasting effect like the original forms of activism like protest. She is partly correct because as she explains these social media movements are easy to grow and make big, but it does not last as long as protest movements that keep those interactions. Now people just participate and movements, but do not change their way of thinking. This is not enough people need to agree there is need of change and think collectively to resolve the issue. This was lost from the shift to starting movements on social media instead of protesting movements. All of the attention is good, but lets not forget the point for a real social change.

Hashtags on Twitter changed the way we talked about social issues as well. One big hashtag I remember was the #IceBucketChallenge. The challenge became very huge, but what started as a way to get people to donate for research funds for ALS became something people were just doing for fun. Attention was being raised to the challenge, but the cause was lost. It was something for friends to do to challenge their friends to donate money to a cause while adding some fun to it to encourage others. Before seeing some celebrities doing donations I did not know what the ice bucket challenge was for besides just dumping cold water on your head. What I take from this article is the same from the TED Talk. With online activism growing in popularity it is taking away some of the benefits of going out and protesting.

WEEKLY NEWS: https://people.com/human-interest/50-richest-americans-almost-have-more-money-than-half-the-country/

The article I chose was a news article I saw on Twitter I found very shocking. The 50 richest people in America have almost more wealth than the entire U.S. I just thought that was a crazy fact.

The cute cat theory. Since being in this course, this is something I’ve really thought about. The fact that the internet truly is a place and has a place for everyone. The intellectuals to share papers and medical research being at the ready for any doctor anywhere. This is incredible, this is the dream, for everyone to have access to these amazing things and for everyone to prosper. But, here we are, taking amazing things for granted and we share pictures of cute cats. I mean obviously I’m not complaining, I love cats and I am definitely one of those people who share cats but that just shows how -for lack of a better term right now- basic ‘normal’ people are. We have extraordinary minds in our midst. Surgeons, writers, architects; beautiful and brilliant people who save a change lives every day. And here I am, using this platform for brilliancy for something trivial, like cats or raccoons. And I am fully aware I don’t have the mind to do what those people do but it makes me feel like there’s more out there for me, and for everyone. I don’t know I guess reading the article really got me thinking. 

Which leads me into the next article- the digital shift. Using the internet for hate, which I personally will never understand. It can bring people together, to create social change and get movements started and thriving. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 20 years, is that there will ALWAYS be assholes. Always. Every time, everywhere you go, everything you do, there’s an asshole lurking. Especially on the internet. Some people just don’t have the self control not to say the hateful things. Because of this, people fight. Tension rises and fire starts and it creates a disconnect, and that disconnect, dehumanizing people on the internet is where the problem lies. And unfortunately there’s no way to change that. Bitmojis and the new Facebook avatars I think were trying to humanize and make it so you see a little miniature person rather than nothing, but I could be totally wrong. I’m not one of the high ups on Facebooks board so don’t quote me on it but it’s what makes sense in my head. 

10 Twitter hashtags is where I get lost. I definitely have tried to get into the Twittersphere but I don’t know, something about it just doesn’t real me in. And I’m not the Instagram hashtagger , so I don’t really use them either. #Ferguson being number 1 really did shock me compared to #blacklivesmatter or #lovewins. I’m sorry,  not being an official Twitter user I don’t have a lot to say about this. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/09/hurricane-delta-track-live-weather-updates-storm-louisiana/5925437002/

This is heartbreaking and not about Covid or Trump. Ive got a lot of family down south so hurricanes are always scary.