- I agree with you Angela that there is a fine line between creating work from the inspiration of another artist's work and taking credit for another artist's idea. You and I talked about this in detail before. As a musician, primarily vocals, I started my passion for music and singing because of a song on the radio or (check this out!) the 8 tracks, 45, or cassette tape. Yes I am getting that young! Lol!
- Anyway, Roberta Flack was my first inspiration. Well back then you could sing the hell out of anybody’s song and not worry about a thing. Artists actually took it as a compliment. People would ask, “who is that artist?” and I’d say, “Roberta Flack” then they’d go out and by the cassette or CD as time went on. The Arts are supposed to be about inspiration, passion, and emotion, plus a bowl full of other stuff. Japan wouldn’t have beaten the U.S. in technology if the U.S. had never showed them their technology. In there lies the issue; the respect, common courtesy for the person or thing that inspired a person is fading. The disrespect now flows on both sides. Until people learn to treat each other fairly again, the Fair Use Issues will continue.
- How bout this for a dream: I just read an article, Emerging Copyright Issues of Music Industry – International Prospective by Gaurav Singh (2008). According to Singh,
“a new term called Copyleft licensing is also used these days; the term is used to describe the removal of Restrictions on the use of ideas and information. People who wish to share their materials can use the Copyleft license to allow others to reproduce, adapt and distribute copies of their work”.
Now this might be a great workaround. If I don’t mind you using my stuff I’ll just create a copyleft license so is no drama. Hope this takes of across the board.Singh, G. (2008). Emerging copyright issues of music industry – international prospective. JurisOnline.in. Retrieved on June 29, 2011 from http://jurisonline.in/2008/09/emerging- copyright-issues-of-music-industry-%E2%80 %93-international-prospective/
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wk 1 Classmates Blog - Angela
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wk 1 Classmates Blog - Brandi
- Brandi I am way older than you and I remember the ease of going to the internet to for everything to put in my paper or project. It really is about the money more than anything. Like everything in this world it starts off with a legitimate purpose. Artists have to eat and pay for their equipment and just wanted a way to protect that. Then hackers started copying and peer to peer started and then sampling. There are a lot of artists who really don't mind having their works inspire others to do something. It is like free advertisement. But then someone took an original work and called it theirs a law suit started and ching-ching people realized they could make more money by suing someone who even has a slight semblance of their original work. It goes even deeper than that. As you stated it effects how you educate your kids and limits the materials you can use to help them learn. It's sad but it will only get worse unless the laws go back and that usually doesn't happen.
- Wed Jun 29, 08:55:00 PM PDT
Brandi's Post
When I first started teaching, it was such a big deal for students to be able to get on the Internet and access information. They delighted in the opportunity to copy “cool” pictures and put them in their PowerPoint presentation or on a poster project instead of using lame clip art ~this was a BIG deal. Teachers at the time, delighted in the professional pictures students had and didn’t think twice about where they came from. Not only were they able to have really high quality pictures, we then taught them how to loop music into their PowerPoint. All they had to do was bring their favorite CD, choose the track and voila- they now had “cool” music for their presentation. A few years later, we were then told the music played in PowerPoint could only be so many second long ~that’s it.
How times have changed! These students have been raised to just cut and paste and image from Google and add any music from a CD to add pizzazz to their PowerPoint. Now we are telling them they can no longer do that. We have sent them mixed messages and I believe they see no issues with borrowing someone’s work.
I am of the opinion that we need to give credit where credit it due when it comes to images, songs, photos, works of art, etc. However, where do we draw the line? I see this in my own course- Marketing. Businesses use pop culture images and music to sell their products and I’m sure they follow the copyright laws to the tee. But, just as Fairey used the picture of Obama from Google and manipulated it (regardless of how much he changed it), how many companies or advertising agencies find an image and change it up a bit without ever acknowledging the original producer? I bet more times that we think.
So when I ask my students to create an add for a product and require them to include a logo, is this violating copyright laws? Should I get special permission for the companies? It is for educational use and I cannot teach the unit without it unless I have them create their own logo and company and for each assignment??Is that truly providing real world opportunities?? Hmmm… How much longer can I continue to claim “for educational use” before that right is challenged and I will have to resort to my own music recordings and freelance pictures to be free from being a copyright violator~ or search for creative commons material and sort through the fine print of do’s and dont’s of creative commons?
Copyright is muddy waters and will continue to be as long as we have the opportunity to search, copy & paste, download and reuse content from the web.
Wk1 Reading: Copyright Issues
This weeks reading especially Part 1 discussed the infringement of copyright laws regarding sampling music. One of the videos I watched focused on Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk who is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution and another mash up artist named Danger Mouse.
Gregg has seen his share of legal troubles regarding whether he has a right to sample other artist’s music and call the finish mix his own creation. Gregg meticulously layers mixes of other artist’s music into an artistic form. From dance-crazed teenagers, night clubbers, to head bangers his music seems to be extremely popular. Brett Gaylor, creator of opensourcecinema.org, a video remix community wrote a documentary about copyright and the information age titled Rip: A mix manifesto. In this documentary Brett classifies Gregg’s sampling as original creative art. There are obviously some artists that have given permission for their work to be sampled but there are just as many artists who have gone to court over even the slightest semblance of their work. At one point in the class reading video Gregg Gillis boasts how he will use an Elton John sample with a tone that clearly hinted an air of controversy.
Danger Mouse created a piece that took a video song from one artist, the Beetles and merged it with a video song of another, Jay-Z. The idea was ingenious. The album was a statement and titled Grey Album. The Beetles were a white group and their video was in black and white from the 60’s. Jay-Z is a black rapper from today’s generation.
I personally think that the copyright issues have gotten out of hand. Danger Mouse’s work reminded me of the Bob Dylan assignment we did in Musical Theory and Applications class at Full Sail. We took Bob Dylan’s Mediterranean Homesick Blues lyrics and recorded ourselves singing his song to our composed music.
I have to say I agree with Lawrence Lessig’s statement that in this new age of technology people will and are beginning to find new ways of expressing themselves with music. But are they really? I read in a blog somewhere the following statement: “Authenticity is invaluable, originality is non-existent.” Wow right! That is some deep sh*#. But it is true to a degree.
I am a musician and understand the importance and need for an artist to protect their work. However, the copyright laws are changing and becoming more inhibiting as well. Who’s to blame for this chaos? The entertainers who create strictly for the dollar bill. Let’s keep it real here. Jimmy Douglass, music engineer for top celebrities like Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, and more was on campus and stated how much the industry has changed for the worse due to technology. And I have to agree with him. Musicianship is dying and that is why there are so many controversies surrounding copyright infringements.
Lessig stated that he wrote books to be published and for people to learn from them. Sure he doesn’t want someone to take his book change the cover and go out, republish the book and get paid for all the work he put into it. He did state, however, that he could not see himself getting upset if someone took what they learned from his book and created works of their own based off what they gained. That’s the reason he wrote the book.
The music industry used to be the same way. This may be the generation of mass sampling and mash up music, but there is a lack of original creativity in music today. I love all music even this mixtaped generation carries a slight air of creativity but only in half the sense. I love using my Garageband. I am grasping more and more the talent to sample loops and instruments to create, No to compliment my work. I look forward to seeing the mixed-taped generation fade out and 100% originality bloom back in.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
wk1-2 Discussion Board Quickie
Topic #2: Tech in your workplace: How has your workplace kept up with tech or not kept up with tech? What kinds of tech things have you bought to use in your classroom/presentation? Please give examples (and have a little fun with the idea…).
I work for a third party company that pays the parent a stipend to hire me to work with their at-risk children. I decided to do my AR on the four, now five young men I work with since I lost my job in the business industry. I am a musician and they are young and talented rap artists. So I utilize Garageband to record beats to match their rap lyrics. Of course cell phones are a big part of our tech use for communication, since I am unable to monitor them at school or on a consistent basis at home.
In my Cycles I have also worked with the young men in creating video projects using iMovie, so we use the MacBook a lot. Although they make fun of me because I only own the old XBOX but when they come over for our weekly open rap talk sessions they do play my games, outdated and all.
wk1-1 Discussion Board Quickie
Topic #1: Briefly share an experience about using media (visual and/or auditory) in class or during a presentation, focus your comment on any work-arounds or solutions you used when the tech wasn’t quite working or when the tech wasn’t adequate to do what you had originally planned.
I was doing a recording session with a friend of mine. He had a 24 track board and a slew of other recording gear. I had 6 songs ready to go for recording. It started to rain outside, then thunder and lighting came. Moments later the lighting hit so hard it friend the board.
Since I drove an hour to do the recording we had to figure how we would record this CD. So we took a small handheld recorder and plugged it in and used it as the interface and recorder. It was mixed down and the CD demo was created. The sound was obviously not as crisp but the work-around worked.
Since I drove an hour to do the recording we had to figure how we would record this CD. So we took a small handheld recorder and plugged it in and used it as the interface and recorder. It was mixed down and the CD demo was created. The sound was obviously not as crisp but the work-around worked.
Resource: image from http://wheresrhys.co.uk/2009/08/geocoding-in-the-uk/
Previously posted within the FSO assignment page Tuesday, June 28, 2011 - 02:32 AM
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