Yvette's Eportfolio

•  Prosumerism
• Creativity blending media consumption with media production to create new works that are freely disseminated online
• ''at electric speeds the consumer becomes producer as the public becomes participant role player'' (McLuhan 4)
• Creating a new creative era of mass customisation of artifacts culled from the (copyrighted) media landscape (Tapscott 62-3)
• The propertarian approach is winning and frequently leading to absurd results. (Collins)
• Fair Use
• The balance between private and public interests in creative works is facilitated by the doctrine of fair use
• The majority of copyright laws contain ''fair'' exceptions
• Fair use characterised by a flexible, open-ended approach that allows the law to flex with the times
• Despite its flexibility, fair use has been systematically eroded by ever encroaching copyrights
• ''Legal regime for intellectual property that increasingly looks like the law of real property, or more properly an idealized construct of the law, one in which courts seeks out and punish virtually any use of an intellectual property right by another.'' (Lemley 1032)
• This paper situates fair use as an essential legal and cultural mechanism for optimising creative expression
• Fair use is a safety valve on copyright law to prevent oppressive monopolies
• Lange and Lange Anderson argue that the doctrine is not fundamentally about copyright or a system of property, but is rather concerned with the recognition of the public domain and its preservation from the ever encroaching advances of copyright (2001)
• Fair use should not be understood as subordinate to the exclusive rights of copyright owners
• The complete spectrum of ownership through copyright can only be determined pursuant to a consideration of what is required by fair use ( Lange and Lange Anderson 19)
• Fair use is not only about the marketplace for copyright works; it is concerned with what Weinreb refers to as ''a community's established practices and understandings'' (1151-2)
• Judicial application of fair use has consistently erred through subordinating the doctrine to copyright and considering simply the effect of appropriation on the market place for the original work.
• The current state of copyright law is, as Patry says, ''depressing''
• Preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners
• ''Free culture'' proponents warn that an overly strict copyright regime unbalanced by an equally prevalent fair use doctrine is dangerous to creativity, innovation, culture and democracy
• The rise of the Web 2.0 phase with its emphasis on end-user created content has led to an unrelenting wave of creativity, and much of it incorporates or ''mashes up'' copyright material
• The fair use doctrine in formulating a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
• Fair use is an authorised use of copyrighted materials because the doctrine of fair use is embedded into the Copyright Act 1976
• Fair use '' should not be considered a bizarre, occasionally tolerated departure from the grand conception of copyright design'' but something that it is integral to constitution of copyright law and essential in ensuring that copyright's goals can be fulfilled (Leval 1100)
• Fair use applies to unlicensed use of sound recordings and re-establishes de minimis use
• In order for the balance to exist in copyright law, cases must come before the courts; copyright myth must be challenged
• McLeod states, ''the real-world problems occur when institutions that actually have the resources to defend themselves against unwarranted or frivolous lawsuits choose to take the safe route, thus eroding fair use'' (146-7)

• Federal Law allows citizens to reproduce, distribute, or exhibit portions of copyrighted motion pictures, video tapes, or video discs under certain circumstances without authorization of the copyright holder. The infringement of copyright is called ‘‘Fair Use’’ and is allowed for purposes of criticism, news reporting, teaching, and parody.
• Chap 1: Copyright definition
• Copyright is a permanently fixed the original work, permanently fixed the original work in some form than can be seen or heard.  Only the copyright owner has the right to use their work.  It’s forbidden to use a copyright work without the permission granted by the copyright owner. Anyone who uses the copyright work has broken the law. And we better be able to pay the copyright permission.  
• Chap 2: What can be copyrighted
• Books, plays, music, dance, movies & pictures
• We can't copyright an idea. Our culture told us that it would be unwise to limit the power of a great idea. We can only copyright for an idea text.
• Chap 3: Copyright duration and the public domain
• The law says copyright only last for a fixed amount of time. For example, copyright also last for only ten years.  Our culture thought that was long enough for a copyright owner to make money from their work.  After just for ten years, the work will into the public domain.  Anyone could use the work.  Public domain is a disgrace of forces of evil. A work in the public domain is free for anyone to use. It’s essential because our culture creates new ideas by building earlier works.  So the public domain is necessary a living striving society. Unfortunately, copyright keeps getting longer.  There seems to be no limitation for copyright on how long copyright last.  For example, copyright now last a lifetime plus seventy years and for a company copyright last over hundred years. So, copyright last more like forever.
• Chap 4: Fair Use
• There are limitations on copyright. Copyright maybe broken as its slippery.  You can borrow a small amount of the copyright work to teach, news reporting, parody, critical comment.  There are certain rules that demonstrate fair use, first is the nature of the work borrowed,   second of all is the amount you borrowed.  And it has to be something that doesn’t change the original work’s value the market place.(commercial impact) Fair use is not a right. Fair use is only a legal defensive position. And this is not fair.  

•  Three story to one argument
• First story, in 1906, John Philip Sousa travelled to the United States capital and talk about the ''Talking Machine'' He said, '' These talking machines are going to ruin artistic development of music in this country.  When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together songs.  Today you hear this infernal machines going night and day.  We will not have a vocal cord left.  The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.''
• Read Write Culture vs Read Only Culture
• Read write culture is a culture where people participate in the creation and the creation of their culture
• Read only culture is a culture where creativity was consumed but the consumer is not a creator.  A culture which is top-down owned where the vocal cords of the millions have been lost
• The 20th century (developed world) was a century where culture moved from this read-write to read-only existence
• Second story is about two farmers who raised a case that complained the airplanes were trespassing their land.  and the supreme court used 'common sense', a rare idea in the law, to object the case. 
• Common sense revolts at the idea
• The third story is about the broadcasting 'war' between ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated).  When broadcasting was created, ASCAP was the legal cartel that controlled the performance rights for most of the music that would be broadcast. They raised rates by 448% between 1931-1939. In 1939, Sydney Kaye started BMI.  BMI was much more democratic in the art that it would include within its repertoire.  BMI took public domain works and arrange them to be given away for free to their subscribers.  In 1940, ASCAP threatened to double their rates then the majority of broadcasters switched to BMI. In 1940, ASCAP cracked, the broadcasters did not revolt as ASCAP predicted.  Even though the broadcasters were broadcasting something called second best, that competition was enough to break, at that time, this legal cartel over access to music.
• The Argument:
• Internet is reviving the read-write culture
• User-generated content, spreading in business in extraordinarily valuable ways like these, celebrating amateur culture 
• Culture where people produce for the love of what they are doing and not for the money
• Culture that the kids are producing now
• They remix many contents into a different media form and it is not called ''piracy''
• They are taking and recreating using other people's content by using the technology, it is a literacy for this generation
• There is a growing extremism that comes from both sides in this debate, in response to this conflict between the law and the use of these technologies
• To balance it, Lessig stated that two types of changes is needed:
• First, that artists and creators embrace the idea; freely. So, for non-commercial, this amateur-type of use, but not freely for any commercial use.
• Second, we need the businesses that are building out this read-write culture to embrace this opportunity expressly, to enable it, so that this ecology of free content, or freer content can grow on a neutral platform where they both exist simultaneously, so that more-free can compete with less-free, and the opportunity to develop the creativity in that competition can teach one the lessons of the other
• Conclusion: artists' choice is the key for new technology having an opportunity to be open for business, and we need to build artists' choice here if these new technologies are to have that opportunity
• Kids vs Us
• We made mixed tapes; they remix music
• We watched TV; they make TV
• We can't kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it
• We can't stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground
• We can't make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, ''pirates''
• We live in this weird time, it's kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law
• They live life knowing they live it against the law
• The realization is extraordinary corrosive, extraordinary corrupting

• Blockbuster
• the audiovisual product
• when come into cinematographic field - distinguishing characteristics its the size
• the major economic investment
• the amount of taking
• everything revolves around the idea that a big production gives a better performance at the box office
• the investment nowadays
• the promotional process
• the choice of genre
• the narrative component
• the place of consumption
• Steven Spielberg - the director of Jaws - the father of blockbuster genre
• Blockbuster and the new economic politics of Hollywood, would not exist without television
• The advent of television turned the home into new entertainment centre, changing the forms and places of film consumption (Gomery,1992)
• The first distinctive feature - the high economic investment involved
• Costs are much higher
• Blockbuster was born as a transnational product (Stringer, 2003)
• A commercial product targeted at an international market
• In blockbuster, the economic of media products are more important 
• The cinematographic transposition of successful novels/TV series/ plays, participation in festivals
• The saturation booking strategy
• able to influence the economic performance of a film converge in it
• represented a revolution in the three stages of the film industry's value chain
• Jaws 1975 taught the film industry 3 lessons: 
• the central role of advertising in order to guarantee the success of the film
• television's capacity to advertise a film to viewers and make them want to see it
• the importance of the opening weekend, considered to be the most critical moment in the life-cycle of a product
• Why the strategic role of the opening weekend
• to concentrate advertising costs and optimize effects
• the new distribution strategies increased the concentration of advertising in that period but did not reduce it in terms of quantity
• to avoid a qualitative debate
• These movies depend on the so-called 'uninformative information cascade' (De Vany, 2004)
• hit and run (De Vany, 2004)
• the effect does not last long (De Vany, 2004)
• this way quality becomes irrelevant (Lewis, 2003) and is no longer an economic threat
• to maximize the cost of transfer rights
• movies that manage to maximize their presence at the begining of the life-cycle will command the highest prices
• to maximize the star and pre-sold identity effect
• stars have turned into brand products (Bakker, 2005)
• pre-sold identity concept
• only consider the phenomena of sequel, prequel and remake
• they are not completely new products, public more familiar
• to reduce the danger of competition
• major distributions always reach an agreement on the release of their most important list of movies
• blockbusters tend to come out in the summer when the networks' competition is weaker
• to exploit the potential of multiplex cinemas
• the life-cycle of movie has been shortened by (the windowing system)
• the wide opening weekend release pattern
• the concentration of advertising in the weeks immediately before the first screening
• to maximize distributors' receipts
• distributors and exhibitors share the takings according to percentages that change over the weeks
• the concentration of revenue on the first weekend brings a higher remuneration for the distributor
• Conclusions
• blockbuster manages to propose a kind of film where the promise of novelty and greatness lies in the use of advanced technology able to offer exciting special effects
• the risks liked to original and against-the-mainstream choices
• the opening weekend has become the central moment of the life cycle

Reading Material: Lessig, L.(2006). Four puzzles from cyber space. In L.Lessig Code Version 2.0 (pp9-30). New York: Basic Books.