Blog#8

I cannot say that the results surprised me as I feel that the law is completely arbitrary and pointless most of the time. I agree with Robert that it ideas are created collectively and it is highly unlikely that any person is the only person to ever have come up with anything. Deciding whether something is truly a parody, ‘transformative,’ or ‘commercial’ are dangerously subjective notions. I also agree with Jamie when he says that many of these cases have to do with money and whether the court feels you should or should not be able to make money off said use of someone else’s material.

Having said this, as a writer, there is nothing worse than the idea of having your words stolen from you. I read recently that the premises for The Matrix and Terminator were written originally by a black woman, Sophia Stewart. I don’t really know how credible this is, but knowing the politics surrounding publishing, this would not surprise me. I do not, however, see any problem with taking something that is already published and creating your own artistic interpretation to that piece such as in the cases we read about. I also don’t fully comprehend the purposes of stringent copyright issues related to education. These laws make it very difficult to disseminate less popular opinions and allow outdated and corporate media to do much of the teaching. For example, I was very interested in assisting independent filmmakers publicize their work to wider audiences but was soon discouraged by how difficult it is to find copies of such materials, particularly because of their high costs. These high costs are also related to copyright laws that do not allow individuals to purchase certain independent films for ‘commercial use’ only for educational use making the costs very expensive (as it is expected that these films will be purchased by libraries and universities not individual educators/people simply wanting to help promote). Similarly, I would argue that downloading songs illegally actually helps many less known musical artists get their music spread to a wider audience.