Copyrights and wrongs

Copyright. What does that word say to you? Does it say 'unnecessary restriction' or does it say 'necessary lifeline to media producers'? Depending on your answer, you will either be anti- or pro-copyright, and probably with good reasoning each way.

The internet is the main location for copyright debate as it is where the majority of copyright infringement takes place. The internet was originally designed to be open, yet many people now believe it is far too open as copyrighted material is now extremely easy to get hold of. Due to programs such as uTorrent and LimeWire as well as websites such as The Pirate Bay it has become very easy for people to get things for free. In fact, The Pirate Bay has gained a lot of media attention recently- despite it being a database of torrents rather than a site hosting them.

Media companies are so defensive of their copyright that they have written letters to The Pirate Bay on multiple occasions, and these can be viewed here (alongside the websites rather humorous and outspoken reactions). I don't believe that torrenting is legal in any way - but I do believe that it has become a standard part of communication these days, and file sharing is just not likely to go away any time soon. Whilst it does deprive media companies of revenue - I do not think the problem is as drastic as people perceive, especially as music and DVD sales are currently rising. I think that the internet should be kept free and unrestricted, even if this does involve some forms of copyright breaching. Obviously, media producers do deserve to keep creative control over their property - but I do see it as an unnecessary restriction at times.

One such way in which it is particularly obstructive is involved in participatory or remix culture. How is it possible for culture to evolve through editing and remixing when media conglomerates block such things from breaking through due to their extremely possessive nature about copyright? Despite being rhetoric, the answer to this question simply is "it can't." In my opinion this is a sad state of affairs for our culture. We are being smothered by the companies in charge, who are desperately trying to stifle creativity and convergence just in case their copyright is broken.

What is more worrying and restrictive is the 2010 Digital Economy Act that our beloved UK Government has just passed. This Act is utter nonsense and is one that particularly worries me, and those others who believe in freedom on the internet. For those who don't know, the Act allows ISPs to disconnect people under suspicion of brekaing copyright law (without evidence), allows ISPs to begin 'bandwidth throttling' in order to slow down people's internet connections, and allows the UK Government to block any website they wish on the premise that it contains copyrighted material illegally. These draconian measures particularly worry me as they appear to be locking down the internet in a way that will simply ruin our modern day culture rather than block copyright infringement. After all, it is surely only a matter of time until a new way of downloading that is undetectable to the Government is discovered and made popular amongst internet users.

One way of meeting in the middle with copyright is the idea of Creative Commons Copyright. This means people can place a Creative Commons Copyright on their product which allows for flexibility. It allows people to use things commercially, or to take parts of their work and do what they like with it - provided they do the same with theirs. In fact, it is so easy to do this that I have put a CC Copyright onto this blog post.

I think that copyright is, on the whole good for media - but it is the ways in which it is enforced and policed which make the issue a difficult one. I agree that copyright is needed, but I believe that on public forums such as the internet where file-sharing is rife it should not be attacked in the way it has been. The internet should remain free, and participatory culture should remain untouched. Things like the Digital Economy Act are damaging to our society and the internet as a whole, and go as far to ruin all the work that things like Creative Commons have done to find a possible middle ground for copyright usage.

Copyrights and wrongs by Scott Kelly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at scottkelly91.blogspot.com.
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You've Got The Power!

The Internet is home to all sorts of campaigns due to its open nature and the social power that is behind it. Whether on social networking websites themselves like Facebook and Twitter or on websites designed specifically for campaigns - like Channel 4's Battlefront - the Internet appears to be full of people campaigning or trying to get their opinions across to an audience as far reaching as possible.

In order to experience this in some way, we had to form our own campaign idea within our workshops. This gave us the opportunity to work out how we would form a campaign and spread our word to the corners of the world. We chose to base our campaign around the proposed idea that would force students to do compulsory community service in order to help pay off some of their loans. This is an idea that I, along with the rest of my group, are strongly against - as it seems to treat us students like criminals, and does not allow for any choice in the matter.

Once we had an idea for a campaign, we needed to create a video in order to spread the word. After viewing different videos on the Battlefront website, it was decided that we did not want to do anything too serious - as this would not attract the attention of the majority of our target audience: students. This led to the following tongue-in-cheek production which we believed could be turned into a form of viral campaign which people would forward to their friends in order to spread the word.

As you will notice from watching the video, the ending provides links to places which further our campaign. As a group, we knew the power that social networking websites hold for campaigns - with good examples coming from the recent 'battles for Christmas Number 1' in recent years which have shown how the power of a simple social networking site can convince thousands of people to buy a song at once.

We also knew that these sites are extremely popular with young people, especially students, and so it would be silly of us not to include them within our plan. By using Facebook, a campaign can share video, news, information and events with its followers, whilst interacting with them and making them feel involved too. By using Twitter an even closer form of interaction is displayed through the '@reply' feature and allows the campaign to give shorter, snappier and more up-to-the-minute updates to how they are getting on.

Whilst we did not actually make a Facebook page for our campaign (though one does exist already), we did make a Twitter account: @dmusaccs. Although it is not exactly populated with many tweets, it shows an example of how the word can be spread to many people, very quickly.

I think the Internet is the perfect place for people to campaign, as it is so social and open. The boundaries are near enough limitless on the Internet, and this freedom is what makes 'net campaigns flourish so much. Even on a small scale like this one, I think my group proved quite well how campaigns can be thought about and set up in a small space of time - even if they are not produced and finished to the high-end and widespread standards of something more professional like Battlefront.

Remix Culture II - Why is it important?

A couple of months ago I blogged about The Muppets' version of the classic Queen song 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' This was both an example of Remix Culture as well as Viral Videos. Whilst I covered how remix (or participatory) culture is good, and how it is popular - I did not explain why it is important and why it should stay within our culture. Remix Culture is a great part of our culture as it encourages convergence and it allows the consumer of media to become the producer of the media.

There are many forms of remixing, though the most popular tend to involve videos and websites such as YouTube. Many forms of remix video have gained millions and millions of views between them - despite the fact that they often break copyright law. Having said this, remixing tends to be not-for-profit and thus is, in my opinion, a part of our culture that should be allowed, especially as the creativity of many people can influence what the large media conglomerates then do with their products.

This is the fundamental reason, in my opinion, why remix culture is important. It encourages creativity and convergence and is the main reason why our culture evolves - thanks to the innovation of the consumer. To discuss remix culture without an example would be silly, so here are two popular examples of remix culture - both in video and music.

Here is one of the more well known forms of remix culture, the subtitling of a scene from the famous film Downfall in order to alter the meaning of Hitler's rant:

This is a particularly interesting version of these Downfall parodies, as the parodies themselves have started to be removed from YouTube due to copyright claims from the movie's producers. This behaviour intrigues me, as millions of people have seen variations on these parodies - and they have brought much attention onto the film Downfall that would not have otherwise reached the movie.

This is, however, what remix culture comes down to: copyright. I believe that it is important for our culture as it shapes and evolves what we already have into something new and innovative. Yet, when it is stifled by media companies - it becomes very difficult for this creativity to actually break through.

Here is another example of remix culture - a video by 'DJ Earworm' who mixed the 25 top selling songs on the US Billboard Chart of 2009 into one single track and video:

This is an incredibly clever piece of music and video - and is a classic example of remixing at its best. Whilst the artist does not own the copyright to any of the songs, he has transformed them into something new and different - which has gained millions of views on YouTube in a short amount of time.

Remix culture is not completely ignored by companies though. the BBC recently encouraged remixing when it offered the EastEnders theme tune up for manipulation for its new online TV drama: http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/e20/behindscenes/theme_tune.shtml.

This shows that not everybody views remixing as bad - especially when permission is given. I believe that even without the respective copyright permission, remix and participatory culture are vital to our society - due to the nature of the innovation and ideas. Without ideas like these our culture would be stagnant, and it is important that media always evolves due to the intelligence of its consumers - who are big enough fans of certain products to spend their spare time working with the media to converge and create something brand new.