This week, we’re entering into another one of those “big topic” controversial issues inevitably raised with emerging technology and teaching and writing: copyright and plagiarism, which are interestingly two sides of the same coin. To get things started, we’ll talk about “Tales from the Public Domain,” a comic by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins.
This was a reading recommended to me by my colleague Derek Mueller and it was new to me this term. Interesting stuff: I always like comics, and I always like ones that try to introduce complex like this one. Copyright law is very complicated, and since this one is about documentary film making and thus a little different than our purposes here, I’m not expecting everyone to get each and every part of this.
But I also think this comic does a nice job of outlining the basic concerns of copyright and fair use. I think it does an especially good job of describing the good things about copyright– a lot of the sorts of critiques I’ve read describes copyright in all negative terms.
I really enjoyed this piece. I am all about comics and really want to learn more about them, visual literacy, and how to incorporate comics in the classroom, especially as a means of teaching writing, but for now, I will settle with reading them when I can
I have to admit, while incredibly useful, I am still a little confused by fair use. If some people could get away with using clips and claim it was fair use, why then did some have to take them out or else pay large sums of money, even when it sounded like they were all short clips? And why are people doing this? Are they money hungry? I had no idea how limiting the laws were and I never thought about the fact that it can and does hinder creativity. It made me sad to read these pieces this week.
Angie– Scott McCloud’s book, “Understanding Comics”, might help you build some ideas for your class.
Thanks Renee, I have a couple McCloud books and LOVE them! I actually just recommended them to a student today!
Like Angie, I thought this was a cool use of the genre of the comic book to make an academic point. I think if this were written as a standard essay it wouldn’t get the attention it will, or has as a comic book. It might benefit other academics who want to reach a wider audience to consider using more approachable genres – maybe we’re all a little tired of reading the traditional academic essay? It seems academia is in a bit of search to modernize itself and use more hip means of argument and this might be a good model to work from.
As for the content, their point that copyright infringes upon the quality and integrity of a documentary is well made. In the audio interview James Boyle gives, also on the website, Boyle points out that a lot of the apprehension about copyright is being driven by business’ that would simply rather not deal with a “potential” lawsuit the use of a sampel might evoke. The result is that production companies end up paying for copyrights or changing the content of their artists’ work to avoid the hassle of a lawsuit. Of course, this prolongs the wait until a high-court has to reach a decision about all this stuff. This seems to be an ongoing problem, where no one wants to have to go through the large time and money sink to actually get a coherent law established so artists have something to refer to when considering “fair use”. It seems the system is kind of rigged in that sense, what do some others think?
Like Brian AND Angie, I thought the comic was amazing. Since my husband is interested in someday teaching law, I had to share the comic with him, pointing out how cool it is to incorporate various genres even into law school curriculum. It was incredible how much information was packed into the comic; it covered such a wide range of issues on this topic while also touching on the pertinent cases that make the laws what they are today. Fascinating!
As for the system being “rigged,” I guess that depends on your perspective. Brian, if you created a beautiful piece of piano music, wouldn’t you want to get credit for this? Or, Angie, if you started creating comic strips, designing curricula, or writing essays, wouldn”t it be awful to find a different person’s name attached to your work? I too am sad with the idea that creative expression needs to be limited, but, at the same time, I think the fair use makes it possible for creativity to continue without being completely stifled by litigation.
I am pretty sure I’m understanding this right, but, with fair use, we could allow our students to make a video and attach portions of copyrighted songs to the video without getting in trouble, right? If this video was posted to YouTube though…would that be a different story?
I think it’s “rigged” in a sense that this comic doesn’t talk about: almost all of the content that is “out there” in the popular culture is owned by just a few companies– Disney, Viacom, Warner-Chappell, BMI, and a few others. It’s awfully hard to claim a fair playing field with those giants around.
And I know that the “what can our students do” issue is one that comes up in Martine’s essay, so that post is next….
I certainly understand people wanting credit for their work and even compensation for their contribution to a text or movie, etc., but I think it’s out of control when documentaries can be shut down or sued when a clip was swept over in the background on a TV or a line referenced by a student. Documentaries are snap shots of life, and it’s not like that clip of the Simpsons was was the focal point of that scene or talked about at that. it just seems extreme and unfair for “the little guys” is all.
James Boyle’s NPR interview does seem to take care of the “little guys”, with filmmakers coming up with an idea of “best practices” or fair use policies. It seems extreme that those accidental cases, like catching 4 seconds of The Simpsons, would cost $10,000 in copyright violations. I believe it’s “fair use” that allows teachers to photocopy works without copyright, if it’s to be used for immediate classroom use. I wonder if such a policy could apply to student work- immediacy of use. Or, if a standard policy was created, like if use of a song or movie clip is 15 seconds or less…. it could be considered copy sharing, rather than violation of rights.
I liked this book. I would like to point out a few things that came to me as I was reading:
*I appreciated that it was in comic form and think that a plain text format would have been okay too. There is a narrative there to help us understand the frustrations in copyright controversies.
*The authors argument and purpose could have been served better if they mentioned the headaches of getting a copyright and how people that create for bigger companies, like Fox, are stolen from all the time.
*So let me get this straight; If I buy a barbie and cut her hair off, I can be taken to court? Another line seems to be drawn here between ownership/maker.
I believe the fact wall in front of two people who were creating new ideas from it sums it all up for me.
Renee, I am no lawyer, but no, I think that one of the “rights” you buy when you buy your Barbie is the right to shave her head. But just to apply this back to books/texts for a second: when you buy a book in a story, you buy rights to do with that object– that book– whatever you want. You can read it, you can give it away, you can throw it away, you can even sell it to someone else. But what you can’t do is reproduce that book in some fashion without permission. For example, you cannot make a copy of it to give to someone else, you cannot make a recording of it and post it on the internet, and you cannot make a film based on the book.
Mind you, this isn’t just about money either– that is, even if you didn’t charge anyone for that copy, you’d still be violating the terms of the copyright agreement if you copied the whole book and gave it to someone.
I think also part of some of the issue here is making money off of someone else’s work. I don’t think that using a book or article as a source in a paper that is for a class or some publicaiton can be seen as using it for financial gain. But when you make a film, documentaries included, you do it to make money. I found it interesting the part about parody though. Does that include Weird Al here too? I mean that is what he does. If I could be sued for cutting off the hair of Barbies I am in big trouble. But, I get what the issue is there because it was about using the Barbie to sell his work and that is what this all seems to be about, money. I feel like a lot of this comes down to who owns what and who wants to keep it that way. I know that as an educator I have used others work and shared mine with so many people that I don’t care about that, but I wonder if someone took one of my ideas for a lesson and put it in a book and sold a million copies would I be so willing to share then? Puts it into a very different perspective from that lens. I think that it all comes down to how it is used and what message is being sent out. Disney does not like any of their images used in a negative way, meaning to say anything bad about Disney at all.
Actually, no, it isn’t about money. This is one of the common misconceptions about fair use, the idea “as long as I don’t make money from it, I can do with it whatever I want.” And I think that does very much extend to all kinds of projects where the documentary film maker doesn’t make any money– student projects, for example.
As I think will be clear when we talk about both Rife and Ward though, part of the issue here is that fair use and copyright is this fuzzy territory where something becomes a problem if somebody “cares,” if that makes sense, and wants to raise a fuss with a lawsuit.
Well I had major issues with the Rife article, not the idea but the content (legal speak). I don’t have an issue with giving credit or paying for something someone created, but this is all fuzzy to me.
I loved this comic! Plagiarism/intellectual property is always something that must be discussed in an English class. Trying to explain it to students, so that they don’t commit any offenses, is tricky and often boring. My favorite thing is that this comic is something that explains a complex, necessary topic in a way that will keep student interest. I was definitely drawn in from the beginning, and I was half-way through before I thought, “Hey, I’m really learning something here!” I think if students were assigned to read this for homework, they wouldn’t hate it.
I have to admit that while reading this, I realized I had a very surface-level understanding about copyright and fair use. Even though the comic took it slow and there were great examples of issues from the past, it was a little overwhelming and, honestly, I shared some of the frustration voiced by the character Akiko. I, indeed, asked the question posed on page 28, “How did we get to this state of affairs? [...] Is copyright actually BAD for artists?” It seems like a laborious, expensive process if you ever want to portray real life not only in movies, but in books as well. What can you use? What can’t you use? Oiy. Your head starts to spin. But, the comic is right. All these laws are good for artists, too. It protects you just as much as the other guy. I suppose it is just another one of those double-edged sword things in life.
Well, I’ve never really gotten into comics that much, which is a bit odd because: I love ink & shading art, I (obviously) love stories and literature, and because my best friend’s family has owned a comic book store for the past twenty years, which I spent a lot of my youth in… but I just never really got hooked. But, I appreciate the art form and willingly admit to it’s value as a lit genre. I really like how they used the format for this discussion… essentially using copyrighted materials to show us how they can be legally used. But, like most legal issues that you read about, there is still some confusion and ambiguity at the end of it. Sometimes I think legislators and lawmakers keep things ambiguous just to screw people over (but there’s my cynical streak again). Maybe it’s my lack of legal training, but it just seems like things could be spelled out so much more clearly than they ever are. That being said, obviously these laws are important. I wouldn’t want something I made to be misrepresented or misused by someone else. But I think file sharing and the internet have made people less willing to let things slide. Now that they are already losing money on the front end when things first come out because people can get them for free, they want to make sure they get all they can on the back end. But, I think Steve’s point about the few HUGE companies that ultimately own a disproportionate amount of the media we encounter is important. It really is ridiculous how much these companies own and how they assert their ownership rights over everyone.
I used to be part owner of a bar, and we had to register with both BMI and ASCAP in order to play any music or television and not risk being sued (close to $1000 anual fee). One company owns half the music and tv rights, and the other company owns the other half. So, not only do you have to pay for cable tv and satelite radio, but you also have to pay for the right to play them… even if you’re not making any money off of them. This includes bands that we hire and cover liscensed material, random people who sing karaoke. It’s just ridiculous. They actually send people into bars & restaraunts to pose as customers, take notes on every song and television image they see, and then fine you without warning if you don’t comply and buy a new liscense every year. Seems to me that this should fall under “fair use” but unfortunately, it doesn’t.
Wow Dave! I had no idea all that was going on in bars and such. Does that mean that when my dad’s band plays (classic rock cover songs, etc) the bar has to pay the companies extra? Wow, they’ve thought of everything!
Well, they don’t have to pay “extra.” Essentially, the bar has to be liscensed w/ the appropriate company that holds the liscense to those songs (and renew it every year). So, if your dad’s band wants to play the Rolling Stones’ “Angie,”
the establishment they are playing at has to be liscensed with either BMI or ASCAP (which ever one owns that song). Once you buy a liscense, all the songs in their catalogue are covered. But, if you don’t have a liscense, you can be sued (I’ve read accounts of bars having to pay $35,000 in fines because they didn’t buy a liscense). I’m not real sure how this plays into things w/ the band, i.e. I don’t know if the band could potentially be sued for playing those songs w/o a liscense, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Most people don’t get caught, but it definately happens more than we’d think.
Agreed! Agreed! The form is pretty ingenious. And the comic itself is SO well-done. Kudos!
The laws are intended to protect authors, though the piece also discusses how the laws should also promote use and creativity. It’s a pretty weird (impossible?) balance to strike, it seems to me.
“Fair” is the operative word in “fair use,” and determining what is “fair” is perhaps the biggest cause of the headache. Automatic copyright–while totally necessary–makes everything so much more complicated, especially when people publish things on the Web and don’t attribute them correctly. It’s SO easy to copy/paste text nowadays, and I don’t think many students understand the stakes. Though students are rarely malicious, naivete is no excuse. English classes seem like natural places to have these important conversations to (at least semi-) demystify the stakes–I completely agree, Ashlee!
But one thing that you’re mentioning here, Carrie, that we’ll circle back to when we start talking more directly about plagiarism: if teachers are kind of unclear and surprised about the rules governing fair use, we probably shouldn’t be too surprised if our students are a little confused about the rules for plagiarism, not to mention fair use.
I think something to consider, along with “fair use” is the concept of intellectual property law… so much of our culture is “intellectual property”. The comic is amazing for highlighting in a concentrated arena the details of copyright… an excellent teaching tool for so many audiences.
I obviously screwed up by cursorily reading this article first, going on to read the other two and then coming back to read this one closely and respond. I think I am three times more confused after reading all three of these.
I am not a comic person and yet I found it very ingenious that they used the comic format to get their ideas across. I also am surprised at how user-friendly and “fun” the lesson was. Married to an attorney, I am used to the dry and technical. I enjoyed this alternative format.
I would think, also, that money isn’t the only concern here. I think that some creators (of whatever-art, music, literature) really want to be known as the creator even if they don’t get any money for it. I even have students (at 15) that don’t want to submit their poems to a contest for fear they might lose their ownership of it! So, I think some of it goes to personal pride, control, etc.
Still, it seems that there are just as many questions as answers.