Copyright

After this past week of class and learning about copyright I haven't stopped thinking about all the times I've seen something be posted that breaks copy right laws. We see copyright laws be broken everyday, from someone putting a song on their instagram video or posting a picture from the web on their personal profile. And as we have learned in class you can no longer prosecute individuals anymore for breaking copyright laws, but if that was still the case a lot of people would be prosecuted.

I personally have seen a lot of copy right issues on Youtube. Many youtubers choose to post music in the background of their songs, and if not done correctly they are flagged for copyright. A lot of times youtube gives them a strike for breaking copyright laws, if they gain three their channel gets erased and they must create a whole new profile. 

I have also seen copy right issues on apps like instagram and vsco, in both these apps I have seen people post pictures that do not belong to them. These people are technically breaking copyright laws. This refinery article talks about why you shouldn't post pictures from others, you are using someone else's work without giving them the fair credit for their work. Just because something is on a public forum such as google images you shouldn't be taking something that is not yours and taking credit for it. 

Apart from seeing pictures being taken a big part of what I have seen are sports games being taped and uploaded to Youtube. An example that relates to me personally is volleyball games that have been posted on youtube. These games are taken from sports channels like ESPN and put out on the internet for those who can not watch it. Although I find this helpful I also find myself feeling slightly guilty for watching something that is taken without the networks permission. This also goes with watching movies online, I always feel sketchy and guilty when I watch a movie online that is on a website that takes movies without permission. 

How do you guys feel about this? Do you watch videos on the internet that you shouldn't be? Do feel guilt from it or that you might get in trouble from it due to copyright laws? 

Youtube & Children

Growing up in the dawn of the internet it's become obvious that technology and social media is the center of many of the younger generations lives. It has got to the point that younger teens are obsessed with the internet and social media. Younger generations have also found themselves being obsessed with Youtube. The video sharing website has focused specifically on younger generations. 

Youtube influencers have also started to target the younger generations by sharing things that they know will get these kids attention. Parents have started to notice that most of their children have become obsessed with these influencers. Many of these influencers are much older than their fans. As the article stated these much older influencers target their younger audience by using content that is often not appropriate for their targeted audience. 

Youtube influencers have obviously mastered the art of targeting younger generations and it shows but the number of subscribers they have. PewDiePie who goes by this name on youtube is the most subscribed youtube with 72 million subscribers and he's not stopping there. This youtube influencer is amongst many who have been called out for their offensive and often racial actions. Two other influencers that have been highly criticized and Jake and Logan Paul, the two brother vlogers (video bloggers), both have a large number of subscribers many being young teens. 

The Paul brothers over the past two years have climbed up the subscribers chart by posting some of the over the top videos where they often do very dangerous things. Logan most known for his controversial video in Japans suicide forest, started his youtube career by posting stunts and videos that specifically targets younger people. His younger brother Jake followed in his older brothers foot steps by posting insane videos including a video of him setting his own swimming pool on fire. The media has very publicly criticized these two vlogers, but some how children are still so drawn to them. How could that be? Because these two and many others know exactly what their young viewers like to see. They promote their viewers to be care free and to have fun and thats what kids like. Kids feel like youtube is their escape from reality, a place where they can enjoy themselves while watching people they look up to. 

Overall I believe that Youtube is a great platform where influencers can influence and connect with their audience. But I do see where influencers can be so over the top with their videos to gain more followers that they become negative role models to their young viewers. 

I'd like to hear what you guys think, do you think that the younger generation being obsessed with youtube is a bad thing? Do you think that these influencers use kids being so into technology to their advantage? 

Copy Righting

Copy right issues have been a huge problem for the music industry for a very long time. This has been a ongoing issue for today's artist who like to sample old artist songs. New artist then try to make a hit for today's hot music with past hits. This is a popular way to make new music for any artist out there. Some do it because they've always wanted to use their favorite song and recreate it in their own way. However, on the other side of the argument, some people who oppose that believe most of today's artist aren't original and just like to copy one another. They think that they don't want to come up with their own music and just ride off of someone else's hard work. So as the new age of receiving content has shifted the way we purchase music, this has caused problems for the artist to get their royalties.
We are in a world where everyone wants free, free and more free content. People will do whatever it takes to get new music as well as old. The most common way people will do this is illegally downloading songs. Some will get the music from a website and then share it for everyone around the world who would like to access to it for free. I'm not going to lie, but when I was younger I would use LimeWire more so than Napster.  This was a way to get free access to movies the website would illegally post. There were also underground rap artist who weren't mainstream that were on these websites. When you are young, you don't understand why it is important to support your favorite artist, all you care about is the content and it being free usually. There were many reports of people getting charged of the illegal downloads and the fines being hefty. On the flip side of this,  the streaming services are not having to pay the artist their true share after every stream or view their songs get. Every website that has the most viewed videos has the worse payout of every streaming service. This famously known service is Youtube. This has brought some concern to people in the music realm. This company receives a very large sum of money for every view and play on their website and videos. On the other hand they are not giving back anything to the artist themselves. This is the evolution of digital sharing. People recognize that there is a huge amount of money to be made. The issue is how are they going to come to a resolution of proper distribution. The big man (corporations) always find a way to screw over the small man (artist). They then leave the crumbs to your consumers. Consumers will then find anyway to get the content they want for free if it doesn't seem like it is a great purchase for them.

What do you think? How will we solve this problem? Is there a way to resolve this problem? How do you think that this will affect artist in the future?

'Fair Use'

With our topic this week of copyright/ copy left I most resonated with the movie we watched in class, RiP: A Remix Manifesto. I have always noticed how intense copyright laws can be in seemingly random cases, such as certain YouTube videos. One of the most interesting points I took from the film was the idea of ‘fair use’. Fair use is copying anything that is copyrighted but using it only in a way to comment upon, critique, or try to explain the content in a different light. This seems to fundamentally be the only leeway that copyright has. I find this concept to be very powerful but this idea caused me to question how all of the content that is shared and re-shared on social media, and how much really qualifies as ‘fair use’.

While researching farther into this topic I came across an article from Forbes titled ‘Fair Use in the Age of Social Media’ which describes the different ways that the fair use law may not be being used fairly in social media. A point in this article that I had not yet thought of was that using copyrighted work in our online conversations is not fair use. What comes to my mind when I think of this point is not only the conversations I have with my friends where I am often sending pictures or memes that are not mine, but also the endless content that is posted online by hundreds of different accounts. Unless those phots are posted in an attempt to share new ideas or open a discussion about the copyrighted work, it will not constitute as fair use. What strikes me most about the things I learned from this article is that I had not really considered any of this before learning about fair use and furthering my knowledge of copyrighted work as a whole. I think that may be the case for many people which to me is sort of frightening, to think of all the people who may accidentally and unknowingly get themselves in trouble.

Apple Gamble of removing the physical Home Button

Apple new that removing the home button will lose some of its loyal customers Apple has proven to be a competitive brand They added a new feature to the smartphone called face ID which gives users the power to unlock their phone without using a fingerprint However companies CEO state it was Gamble stated on BGR News.

Apple stated that over the last generations of smartphones they release over the years was getting kind of old so they wanted to achieve something new and different. However, is said the apple was not the only company to do this rush decision. Google Pixel and Samsung smartphones have removed their physical home buttons. To allow more space features to their phones.

Most consumers experience a lack of pleasanty againist abot the iphone X losing their Home Button. Becuase face can be replcated with an image still their were questions to arise if the Iphone X was intellegent enough to distinguish an image with a real human bean. Media devices can be trick completed by the human intellect. Maybe apple has created the best phone in the market but it is the safe of privacy and how difficult could hackers or goverment access it?

Copyright Infringement and Piracy in Video Games & Creative Commons Use on YouTube

With the controversy of piracy and copyright infringement across social media today, stories constantly pop up online about someone (or a group of users) leaking information or files of something to the public. This can stir up pre-mature discussions about the once-confidential information and, if the leaked information pertains to a product, can anger the company behind it and can lead to profile termination online. There have been situations online where a company tracks down who has been creating content of the leaked information and reporting copyright infringement and then opting to shut down/terminate the profile.

Recently, there has been a big controversy revolving around the upcoming video game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch. The game is slated to release worldwide on December 7th. However, the games files have been leaked online. This has allowed players to gain access over a week before the game is supposed to release for the public. Streamers on Twitch, content creators on YouTube and other sources of content have been tracked down by Nintendo and struck with copyright.

This is an on-going conflict and Nintendo hopes to have it resolved before the game releases next Friday.

On the other hand, we have the Creative Commons License. Which is a license that allows content creators to use other content that would otherwise be copywritten by someone. In my experience, I have seen YouTube users create videos with stock images and music. I typically watch videos that discuss sports and professional wrestling and the channel I mainly follow is called Cultaholic. It consists of pro wrestling journalists creating content regarding the news and history of wrestling and they also do weekly podcasts and other forms of content. If you watch a lot of their videos, you may notice the creative commons music, images, and sound effects they use. This applies to how the license can be used by content creators and it shows how useful little details like that can add to a video.

Cultaholic logo

Copyright with Military Insignia

I remember having so much trouble advertising for the National Guard when I worked full time in marketing. One of the biggest rules we had regarding social media on our state pages and our recruiter’s profiles was that we could not appear as if we (as a state/federal page) were not endorsing other non-federal entities (NFE). You would think that wouldn’t be such a hard thing to accomplish, but this made making relationships with local business super hard because we couldn’t even share their social media posts from our page, much less post a picture of one of our recruiters at an establishment, advertising their military discount. So I decided to do a little investigation of what exactly can and can’t be done.

Acording to the DOD (Department of Deffense) as of 2015, you can’t even use the copyrighted military insignia unless authorized, which you can request, but good luck. If the request go through the slow as dead snails military computer network, you’ll probably get an answer (of denial) after the point of when you actually wanted to use the graphic.

Now if you are a NFE and there is a military presence at your event, you are welcome to post something like a picture with a small context giving caption of the event. In no way can you make it seem like that specific branch of the military is supporting your business or organization. There’s a lot of grey area, and a lot of discernment falls upon the commanders level of command, (the boss of a unit at the state level). But bigger, national organizations or social media pages are montiotred by the bigger bosses in Public Affairs.

Bottom line, if you are a state, federal, private or public organization, make sure to check the copyright on any images, graphics and even regulations on how information should be shared. You might be surprised by what you find!

Here’s a small example of something shared by the U.S. Marines, who arguable have the best marketing campaigns. They portray the Marine Corps as the best, the elite, and the strongest military force. Now I’m in the Army, so I know which force is the best force, but this is a great example of something that is right by all the guidelines!

Cookies, Millennials and the Cyclical Nature of Media

Where I come from, baked goods are a gesture of kindness. My Midwestern upbringing taught me that whenever you want to make a good impression, brighten someone’s day or simply put your procrastibaking to good use, a tray of homemade cookies is a great way to go. This is why I chose to deliver freshly baked chocolate chip and pecan cookies to my downstairs neighbor. She had moved in recently and word got around that she was filing complaints about my dogs. I thought that surely this was a situation where a few cookies could at the very least not hurt.

Imagine my surprise when the cookie plate returned to my doorstep two days later, holding a neatly folded letter. That letter, typed single spaced, outlined all the horrible things we upstairs residents had done. My neighbor – let’s call her June - used an impressive amount of spite and malice while ending with the accusation of us being “infuriatingly entitled.” So much for a good impression.

I can cut June some slack. She’s surely been under a lot of stress while dealing with the fact that she bought a downstairs condo despite her supersonic hearing and hatred of shared walls. It’s a tough spot to be in, and I empathize. But I’d be lying if I said her words didn’t sting a little bit.  

The mention of the E-word might send chills down any Millennial’s spine. I and all my fellow Gen-Y’ers have been dodging shots at our work ethic, personal values, acceptance of technology and differences in consumer behavior for years now. We’ve been accused of killing everything from the housing market to Applebee’s. And the truth is that all we’ve done to earn these accomplishments? It’s the same exact thing I’ve been doing in my upstairs condo that’s driven June insane: simply living.

Millennials, myself and my husband and our two dogs included, are not out to ruin anyone’s day (or industry, or...exorcism?). The point of contention lies in the fact that we are new, we are not like the ones before us, and our decisions about daily life don’t always make sense to older generations. In the midst of advancing technology and evolving societies, things are going to look a bit weird for a while. They always do.

This might not seem connected to the conversation of Social Media and Culture at first glance. However, I challenge you to recall one of the very first points we covered in class this fall and continue to bring up at every topic. The thing we see happening with, being predicted, and being feared is the same time and again: change. It is a constant and yet a point of trepidation at every turn. It’s a classic case. Before society feared the social network, it feared the newspaper. Before the newspaper was the printing press. Before the press, the pen. It’s cyclical and yet unrelenting.

I’ve been coming back to this concept quite often lately. Upon reading Astra Taylor’s recap of the slow disintegration of the art of professional journalism, I found myself mourning the loss of what used to be a truly great art form. It was a reminder that things are always changing, and sometimes that brings discomfort. As the internet gets weirder, the news gets faker and the neighbors get more and more incredulous, I remind myself that nothing about this is unprecedented. What will replace journalism, or Facebook, or any SNS currently in use, might truly be the best thing yet. It's a future we can only hope for.