Wk1 Comment #2 to Josh Tolar

Time to pay the piper

Comment on Josh Tolar’s week 1 reading blog entry

http://jtolar.blogspot.com/2011/05/week-1-reading-copyright-issues.html

Thanks for your blog Josh. It sums up really well how emotional this issue can get. I too was shocked after I watched the video on the freedom movement and how this video cannot be seen now due to copyright expirations. Doesn’t this footage belong to every American to be viewed and reviewed? I find it hard when people claim ownership of footage taken of others living through hard times and, in the case of the Martin Luther King footage, speeches given to the American people that now are locked away in a can only to be revealed for the right price. So is our heritage owned or should it be set free?

I’d like to know how you personally feel as a song writer/video creator when it comes to your own creations and how you see copyright affecting the use of these. (Especially when they are so well done!)

I’m also thankful for this course’s focus on copyright and have really picked up a lot through the videos and seeing different people’s perspective on what is fair use or even their total disregard for any copyright rules! Maybe this is just a picture of the way the future is going to look from a creative standpoint.

That amazed me you got permission from PBS. I suppose you don’t know until you ask. Your example gives me a little more courage to ask if ever I need to use something like that. I suppose the worst that could happen is that they say no.

Original Blog Posting by Josh Tolar

I was really blown away by the video on Martin Luther King and Fair Use.   The fact that the documentary, “Eyes on the Prize”, is unavailable to so many people because of the expired copyright licenses just seems so unreal.  Since I started at Full Sail I have been getting into documentary film making and learning more about Fair Use from this weeks reading helps me put things into perspective.  Before starting the development on my action research there was a film I wanted to use in my project, but I didn’t have the permission.  It was a documentary about Buddhism that aired on PBS and had Richard Gere as the narrator.  I was immediately intimated by the mere thought of using the documentary in any way so I decided to forget about it.  I finally contacted PBS about using the documentary and 2 months later they said I could use it as long as I was using it to teach Buddhism.  Of course I had already developed my own media and the response came too late, but I did become aware of Fair Use during this time.

I’m amazed at all the videos I have seen so far on copyright and how important it is in our lives today.  For so many years I have written music from the inspiration of many commercial artists and I have never used samples from anyone, like in the documentary “Good Copy/Bad Copy”, but its amazing how other cultures around the world are using those samples.  I have used samples before, but they have always been recordings of ambient sounds like traffic or construction sites and those samples were then imported into a sequencer for manipulation.

Apart from the documentaries on Fair use and Copyright, the Ted Talk with Larry Lessig was nothing short of brilliant.  Taking away from his talk, I am reminded about my professional environment and the restrictions on using Creative Commons.  It is important to start embracing this type of licensed material, but there is a belief in my professional environment that the owner of a certain license might decide to change the license at any given time and ultimately restricting the use of media that is already being used.  I’m not sure if this is possible and I understand the concern, but if individuals are intimated by Creative Commons, it only limits our creative abilities.  In developing content for my action research, I used a lot of creative commons material and doing so dramatically increased my ability to produce a rich educational product.

My knowledge of copyright was limited before viewing the videos this week.  I found the content to be exhilarating and sometimes emotional, especially the video about Fair Use with the documentary on Martin Luther King.  We live in a network of social media and intertwined within that media are the creative minds willing to express their very being.  The opportunity to create something to teach people and to enrich their lives is truly a wonderful experience and being able to tap into the massive amounts of media that already exists only increases our ability to create and flourish in the vast social network.