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| Screen Cap of Mike Padilla's blog post |
As a teacher of video production in a High School, my students always like using copyrighted material in their work. Whether they add music, clips from movies, or pictures into their work, a good majority of it is copyrighted. Since it's all for educational purposes and it doesn't leave the classroom, it's never been much of an issue, but all of the videos certainly opened my eyes to the issues with copyright materials.
The film Good Copy/Bad Copy was quite informative and entertaining. I'm glad it featured DJ Danger Mouse because I remember listening to his remix album of Jay Z rapping of mashed up Beatles beats. I remember thinking it was such a great album and I was interested in how the legal issues all panned out. I also had no idea that Nigerian cinema was so huge! That segment was particularly interesting because of the amount of bootlegging that goes on in Nigeria and also how they feel that releasing movies straight to video helps to combat piracy.
Though I thought some of the editing in the film was a bit odd, I really liked how they showed the issue of piracy and copyright from all parts of the world and both between music and movies. I also liked some of the comments in the movie, such as how "freedom drives a more vibrant economy" rather than control. As a huge fan of music and movies, I thought the issues brought up were both relevant and informative and it will certainly be interesting to see how this is handled down the road. As one of the interviewee's in the film said, if they close down piracy in Europe, it'll start up in China. If they close up in China, it'll open up in Russia, and on and on.
Lastly, the videos on Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons were also very informative. I especially liked the video A Fair(y) Use Tail. I thought this was so innovative and brilliant from an editing standpoint and I wonder how long it took them to do this!
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My journalism students seem to share the same thoughts as your video production students. I think the main difference is that in a journalism class, the "educational purpose" defense has not held up because copyright infringement is legally recognized as one of the nine forms of unprotected free speech, even if you give attribution. Also, the journalism industry doesn't have a sector that capitalizes on the use of second hand media, such as the documentarians in the movie industry featured in the fair use videos.
This is not to say that you should change your practice. I'm not here passing judgement. When I have my English students create videos, I'm more lenient in regards to the use of copyrighted material when it is not going to leave the room, but I do require students to give credit to the original copyright holder.
I enjoyed Good Copy/Bad Copy, also. I hadn't heard of The Grey Album, but I've since downloaded it. I have listened to Girl Talk, and I enjoy how he adds new nuance to the music when he remixes all of the songs over top of each other. It's quite impressive, if you haven't heard it
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