As part of the Rudai23 course I am currently undertaking, I have researched copyright and common usage material. The following blog contain my thoughts, (warped as they might be) experience & findings.
I am a budding artist and
amateur photographer, so have always been acutely aware of the use of other people‘s
images. Outside of Dublin, Wexford has a
lot of artists; regular exhibitions and festivals are a common thing. This exposure to art & artists gives one
an insight into an artist’s life. They
can’t all be Andy Warhol’s but they all need to try and make a living & pay
the bills.
My general rule of thumb has
been; if it is a piece of work created by an individual I do not use it unless
I have expressed permission and credit the artist. I would never alter or change an original
piece of work by an artist. When dealing
with an organisation or business, I would consider the fair-usage and
non-commercial aspect of what I was doing.
But, I do have a bit of a rebellious streak and hate when (IMHO) huge
companies overstep their boundaries in trying to impose their ownership and
rights of a product. Being a huge
Scrabble enthusiast, I organise Scrabble tournaments around the country. Mattel who “own” Scrabble attempt to
ascertain complete control over the organisation of tournaments and events but
around the World they are regularly ignored.
Every club, active retirement meeting, tournament, school club &
LIBRARY CLUB is supposed to get written permission from Mattel to run events
and weekly clubs/events. Like this is
practical! When you have something as
ubiquitous and popular as Scrabble, Scrabble itself and the geeks who play it
takes on a life of their own
But most clubs and
organisations ignore Mattel’s demands, sometimes because they are not aware of
Mattel’s attempted complete control, or sometimes due to the fact they refuse
to support or sponsor any events but still try to tell clubs what to do. In Thailand, China & America there are
now alternative names on clubs and organisation to circumvent Mattel’s
authority (e.g. International Thailand Crossword Games King's
Cup is one of the biggest annual events). A perfect example of Mattel’s over
reaching was their case against artist Tom Forsythe and his use of the Barbie
doll in his work. Just Google it for
more information, I don’t want to link to it because there is some adult
content. Think of it this way...nobody
owns Dominos (not the pizza), Chess, Poker or Go.
Too often I see photographs
from people I know used on the internet and print media that have basically
been stolen. On one occasion, after a
community exhibition I had organised I saw a piece by a local artist altered
and used on an event poster for a disco night.
In this case I contacted the creator of the poster and told them they
had stolen the image and informed the artist also. This
misuse and stealing of work has led to photographers putting small resolution
pictures on the internet to show a sample of their work. Others have websites that lock the photos to
stop it being saved (although, as like everything there are ways around this
too) and have a watermark on the work also. This is the cause and effect of stealing on
the internet. Let’s look at this
sequence for example:
1.
1980’s &
1990’s - Public likes a song but doesn’t want to buy the whole album. Solution; use a cassette tape to record the
song off the radio. Woowoo mix-tapes are
born.
2.
Early 2000’s –
Websites created to illegally distribute music on the internet (Napster being
the most famous).
3.
2001 (Mac based)
& 2003 (windows based). Apple iTunes Store opens to legally sell individual
songs.
4.
Torrent File
sharing – whilst in existence since the 1970’s really comes into its own with
common formats of files. E.g. MP3 used for music.
5.
Since the 2000’s
there has been ongoing battles between illegal torrent sites and companies who
create and control original work, in gaming, music, movie and TV.
6.
In the last
couple of years there are legal providers of TV series and movies, e.g. Netflix
& Sky Boxsets.
It’s really a shame that the
distribution changes in the music, movie and TV industry have only happened due
to the illegal activity by individuals and groups on the internet. Whilst not in any way defending the actions
of illegal groups it has meant that I can get access to my favourite Star Trek
episodes for pennies instead of paying over £100 Irish punts per season “back
in the day”. So in this case the “wrong” usage of copy “right” material has led
to better access and better value for the consumer. Do I agree with the method, no, but do I like
the outcome, YES.
There are of course extremes
to every argument, from the industry side “Piracy destroys us, we employ lots
of people and we will go out of business and not be able to create new original
material”. Show me any multimillion
Hollywood company gone out of business because of piracy and I will consider
this argument. On the other side you
have the anarchist that doesn’t believe in private ownership or copyright. Ironically enough you will find they all own
state-of-the-art computers & networks to hack (steal) and share what they
want. So I don’t agree with this
argument either. It all boils down to
greed. The company wants to make as much
profit as possible, the anarchist wants to stop them (and maybe make money out
of on-line advertising themselves or a manner of distributing their own viruses
or bots). The consumer is stuck in the
middle, some happy to avail of everything they can on the internet whilst
others abide by the law.
In the same way that Apple
saw the changes in the music industry and designed a way for music lovers to
buy a song separately from the album at a reasonable price, I think the
publishing industry will have to do the same.
Again cause and effect is happening here too. Books are expensive...e-books provide an
alternative...there is now a common file type (MOBI)...illegal sharing and
downloading will happen. Even if Amazon
come up with some way to “lock” a kindle from using illegally downloaded
material, as always, people will find a way around it. I can’t see any solution except for libraries
to get more involved with digital material and to constantly provide material
at a cheap or free rate to encourage readers to properly avail of the material
they want. This, of course means the
library will have to provide more digital material, for example, Stephen Kings The Stand is not available on
Borrowbox.
Returning to Scrabble for a
moment, a written piece of work can be copyright if it is a group of words in a
unique order. Mattel produce a dictionary and word source for Scrabble players
with Collins. The argument can be made
that Scrabble or Collins doesn’t own the words.
However, the dictionary and word source has a selection of words in a
unique order and that is what is copyrightable (see ISBN 978-0007589081). Simple really until you use a digital device
to check your words played rather than buying the book. Mattel or Collins will not sell the wordlist
in a digital format so to get your digital device to check the correct lexicon
of words one has to illegally get hold of the dictionary and add it to your
device.
(Scrabble Checker Screen
Print, Google Play App store, App developed by Pisanu Chaaloemrattanaporn)
And this brings us neatly
back to the use of images (as I’ve used a couple under fair-usage). At least the “image industry” is easier to
navigate and understand what you can freely use under creative commons licence.
Initial study material
provided for the course is fairly good but with so many options & so many
websites it can be difficult to figure out what you can use. After more research I found the following
useful...a chart from TheVisualCommunicationsGuy (which, I later found in the
Evernotes also) and a chart from Mason East Library website.
Can I use that picture by The
VisualCommunicationsGuy here
Now, as my understanding of
the different types of creative commons is better, I’ve started searching for
images. And wow, what a choice, with
over 70 sites listed for us, for a regular user of Google things get
interesting. Lots of websites and lots
of choice with varying degrees of success & quality. My favourite website is Foter. Why, well go back to the rule of KISS. This website is easy to navigate and
· * Easy to download the image (Blue Circle)
· * Easy to see more details of the image (green circle)
· * Easy to understand how you can use the image (yellow
circle)
· * Easy to attribute the image as they have it done for
you (red circle)
So, in the future I won’t be
changing how I source my pictures much, but at least I now know how to find and
attribute creative commons material. I’m
also going to make some of my images and photos creative commons material.
I’ve set-up a Flickr account &
I’ve uploaded some material and given them a CC of BY NC SA here:
I’ve created a gallery &
added a photo here:
Fini.
John "The Captain" Ryan.
#Rudai23
#Rudai23
All I can say John is WELL DONE and that was a superb post. I love your writing style, not everyone would read all the way to the end but I did, and not just because I am the moderator looking after you and others registered on the Rudai23 course. Looking forward to the next instalment! Michelle.
ReplyDeleteThanks Michelle...will endeavour to make them shorter.
DeleteLoved this blog post, thank you for taking the trouble to write such an informative post! Totally agree with the comment about having bought the book so why do you need to pay again for a digital copy?
ReplyDeleteThanks Hellywobs
Delete