Just as a disclaimer, I am entering this class with little to no formal experience with anything to do with electronic resource management, licensing, or copyright, except that I know I cannot avoid purchasing books for class by scanning an entire copy borrowed from the library (tempting as it is). Generationally, I think the most debated copyright issues for kids like me (still in the ripe-hood of our youth) have been the Napster and purchasing music fiasco while in college (most of which I understood the gist but with which I had no real beef); being pawned what my peers termed “black market” DVDs while on a band trip to New York (they were recordings of the first LOTR movie taken with a home recording device in the movie theater—which I did not end up purchasing, needless to say); and utter disappointment at not being able to watch the opening ceremonies of the most recent Olympics on YouTube the day after they aired, thanks to a “This content has been removed by the licensed owner” (or the likes) from broadcasting companies. Yes, I could be losing sleep over worse...
So basically, it’s not like this has come up every day, unless you count the itty bitty yet very ominous looking messages that prelude movies. I’m very new to this stuff. Our first class readings are from Jessica Litman’s book Digital Copyright (2001). Litman, who I believe is a copyright lawyer herself, does a great job of giving readers a lay of the land with regard to copyright. I won’t give you the play by play, but I will spout out a few reflections I have after what I’ve read thus far.
One of the first things I realized is this: I am not alone! According to Litman, most of us "common" individuals today are pretty clueless about copyright law, let alone how it could potentially affect them legally and financially. I almost fell off my chair when I read that businesses and restaurants are actually supposed to purchase licenses to play musical recordings in their stores (flashback to my own days as a scooping specialist at a 50’s ice cream sweets shop, where we played CDs – probably without a license - because the language and content of modern radio DJs provided a less-than-appropriate ambiance).
I oftentimes hear talk that my generation (kids in their 20s, for those of you who don’t know me) neither knows nor cares about things like privacy because we are not taught to value it but rather make our lives a very open and accessible book, thanks to the advancement of the Internet at large, more specifically social networking sites. I began wondering if this principle also applied to the explanation of why I feel in the dark about all this copyright stuff; is it because I’ve grown up in an Internet world in which information is readily accessible and I am both publisher and consumer, where I am not forced to recognize the middle man and worry about copyright law beyond how I get the music that's on my iPod?
Litman provides some wiggle room for those of us on the sidelines (aka the general public left out of copyright negotiations yet still subjected to liability and legal repercussions). She says that many of your average Joes and Janes don’t know the ins and outs of copyright because copyright law is written by copyright lawyers for copyright lawyers of copyright-concerned institutions and businesses. It is not exactly tailored to be applied to everyday life for individual consumers yet can be enforced as such, which confuses and baffles people. Like me.
Tune in again for more exciting adventures as I learn about, grapple with, and hopefully gain a better understanding of the complex web of copyright, licensing, and electronic resource management.
No comments:
Post a Comment