Posts Tagged ‘infringement’

Content laundering: Technotise, Green Lantern, and user-generated marketing

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

I’m a regular reader of Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily.  I think her blog is a pretty decent way of keeping tabs on all things business of Hollywood.  Sure, she has some detractors, and “TOLDJA” (which she is trying to trademark) gets pretty annoying, but she tends to have really great items on a daily basis.

So, this little item from yesterday about how she’s been getting bombarded by folks with links to YouTube user Jaron Pitts‘s superbly fan-made Green Lantern and Technotise movie trailers caught my eye for a particularly noteworthy reason, in terms of copyright and infringement issues.  Before I dive in to that, though, first, the Technotise trailer he cut so you know what I’m talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPu-PRHtCWE

Basically, Pitts has assembled a trailer almost entirely out of infringing content from all kinds of sources (just as he did for the Green Lantern fake).  Sure, he’s doing it as a fan and we could get in to issues of participatory culture and the work of Henry Jenkins and why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing (and we all know I’d be a hypocrite to call him out for it myself… ahem) but what is REALLY interesting isn’t so much that Pitts is doing the infringing, but rather for WHOM Pitts is doing it.  More after the jump.

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The crowd wants information to be free

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Let me begin with a picture of Kenneth Himma, Ph.D, J.D., and philosophy professor at Seattle Pacific University.

bacon

Alright, all kidding aside, this is actually actor Kevin Bacon in the 1978 film Animal House. And, if you are familiar with the scene being depicted, I should note that I am not asserting that Himma is a flustered ROTC student trying in vain to maintain order during a riot on the city streets after a fraternity prank causes mass chaos, uselessly shouting to the crowd “All is well!”. No, instead I should explain that this image is something that came to my mind when I realized that arguments Himma puts forth in a 2005 accepted and forthcoming APA Newsletters on Philosophy and Computers essay against the popular notion “information should be free” (ISBF) are likely to forever fall on deaf ears. (more…)

Embrace Infringement

Friday, June 12th, 2009

This is my final project for Kraig Baker’s Digital Media Law & Policy course at the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media program, Spring Quarter 2009.


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