What Is Copyright? [Second Lecture]

We began the class by watching an interesting clip about copyright, called “A Fair(y) Use Tale”, using parts of Disney movies.



As the clip mentions, it is in no way a copyright infringement on Disney. The nature of the work and the amount borrowed gives it legal protection. I’m not surprised we watched the clip; it was quite informative given the nature of this program. I always remember my dad saying, “Oh I bet they paid a lot to use that one” whenever musicians’ re-made older songs. I never really understood the world of copyright, but its something I’m going surely going to need to understand.

Mark mentioned two things I wanted to talk about today. First was how different mediums changes the processing of the brain, and essentially reprograms it. He used the example of reading a book versus reading something online. They are definitely two very separate experiences. I always prefer reading a long passage on paper rather than online. The way the world is going, however, I will probably have to become used to reading things online instead of printing them out. I think in thirty years children will receive their text books in disc format and will read all of them on their computer. At least they won’t have the back problems of the generations before them.

Mark also spoke about the four ways in which a person can look at media and culture:
• Media and culture have no relation
• Media determines culture
• Culture determines media
• They mirror each other

I have said before that Postman is a media determinist. He believes the media and its mediums bring upon the culture of today. I tried to think of how I view these four options, and I stand on media and culture mirroring each other. The media would have nothing to work with if it didn’t have different cultures around the world, yet media exaggerates and embellishes to eventually change cultures. New technological advances have changed cultures, but it is still up to us what we do with media. Not everyone reacts in the same way to a message from media, hense why media is different around the world. I don’t think one could completely detemine the other, and to say they have no relation would be illogical.