Thinking about Copyright Issues

One of the recommended but not required books for this course is Bound by Law, a graphic novel that deals with copyright law.  If you haven't read this yet, I strongly urge you to do so soon.   Why?  Because copyright law is central to your video projects.

In the introductory videos that people posted on the YouTube channel, a couple of people added soundtracks to their videos.   You get bonus points for creativity but the music was copyrighted.  That means that someone (the songwriter, the singer, or more likely, the company that bought the rights to that music) owns that song.  You cannot use it unless you pay them for the right to use it.   Period.  

Have you noticed how videos sometimes disappear off of YouTube?  Many times, this is because the copyright holder has requested (or, demanded) that YouTube remove the video for "copyright violation."  

This also applies to images.  Think that you want to add an image that you grabbed off the web to your video?  Think again.  Most likely, that image is copyrighted. 

Now, I'm guessing most everyone has "ripped" music - that is, downloaded it without paying for it.   That's called "piracy" and, yes indeed, it's illegal. 

So, on the one side, we have people who are arguing for "copyright enforcement" (no stealing!) and on the other side we have people who are saying, "but it's on the Internet and we can download it, it should be free!" (pirates!).  

That's where "creative commons" comes in.  This is the creation of Larry Lessig, a law professor and scholar on copyright among other things, who argues that we need a commonsense approach to copyright law.  I'll talk more about creative commons in another post.  For now, watch this brief talk by Lessig (19 minutes or so), about copyright: