- 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.
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