Flaws in the System

YouTube and other sites like it have an interesting law that they have to deal with, DMCA, which is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. This Act give service providers like YouTube protection from copyright infringement liability insofar as they meet specific requirements. One of the largest points for these type of providers is that they have to implement a "notice-and-takedown" system. The requirement that goes along with the "notice-and-takedown" system is that repeat infringers accounts must be canceled.

Congress granted online service providers (like YouTube) certain protections from copyright infringement liability, so long as they meet certain requirements. One requirement of this "DMCA safe harbor" is that online service providers must implement a "notice-and-takedown" system. Another requirement is that YouTube must cancel the accounts of "repeat infringers. 

Here is a video about fair use and at about 15 min 30 sec in there is a really interesting point that is made by Lawrence Lessig: it is called Re-examination of the Remix. 

Think about it when we use the internet there are rules that are there that we don't even know about. How would you like to be treated like an elementary student having to copy something so that your video can be posted and not taken down. The internet is such useful service but there are many aspects about it that cause problems for users. There are whole processes that are required 

Fair Use

Fair Use is something that even the government doesn't have a firm stance on. On their own website it says,"The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission..."


From the government's own website it leads me to believe that there hasn't been a significant updated to Fair Use laws in quite a while. They have this excerpt which amusingly enough is from the Report of the Register of Copyrights on the general Revision of the U.S. Copyright circa 1961. 


"quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”


If this is the point where Fair Use really started from it really just makes me question about the copy right law/fair use and how it is evolving. 


This is a long video but it really does explain a lot about where fair us is a today and give a good representation of both sides of the argument. 

Civilized People

"Stop. Think about it. Every sensation you have comes from one source: civilization....  What can you see, hear smell, taste that does not originate in or is not mediated by civilized people? Crickets chirping on a Sounds of Environment CD doesn't count."(The Sound Unbound)

Every day as we go about our live we are surrounded by things that have been created by the Civilized people. While great advancements have come by these civilized people at the same time much has come to fill in the open areas of our thinking. No longer can we just sit by and have quiet unless we choose to find the time to step back from the world and think. Even the Pope Benedict XVI has spoken on how silence is becoming a rare occurence. Noise has begun to fill in the spaces where before we had openness; places to think and places to learn for ourselves. 

"There's a famous story about the artist Marcel Duchamp. No one knows if it's really true, but that's how stories work. Some time over a period of years in the mid-twentieth century, he decided to stop painting, saying he stopped simply because he had started to just. "fill things in..." This is what's going on now"(The Sound Unbound) {This is an example of Duchamp's work}

If we allow ourselves to get so involved in the noise of the internet because we can perpetually be learning useful or useless information, we will lose the openness where all of the great discoveries are made. It is not through learning random facts or hearing about your favorite basketball player's life that we can truly learn. So STOP STEP BACK AND ENJOY THE SILENCE EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE!

Start of the Constitution

The United States constitution almost didn't have the chance to be formed. General George Washington had been asked to come to a convention to help Amend the Articles of Confederation. Washington didn't feel that this convention was go to be able to succeed and even worse wouldn't be able to make meaningful changes. One state went so far as to not even send any representatives to the convention. Rhode Island felt that the convention was going to attempt to do away with the Articles of Confederation (technically they were correct) and this to them was unacceptable. Many of these states and people who were opposed to the convention wanted to keep the state governments strong and have a weak national government.

Luckily for US (ha ha that can be a pun) General Washington came and was willing to preside over the processions, because of this the convention became illegitimate and was able to come up with a binding constitution. Although its not like it was something super easy to do. Many people devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to accomplish this task.

(side note on this photo the version that we see is modified the original has one person's foot getting stepped on)

The Test Post

So I am posting to see if my circle group of the 18th century B can see my bloggs.

How Big is the Sky

  My name is Montana Thompson. I am from Preston, Idaho; which incidentally enough is the place where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed. I hope you enjoy this video.

 I served a mission in Calgary, Alberta. I recently got engaged to Rebecca Plante. I asked her to marry me over the Christmas break. I am currently attempting to become a business major and I hope that this class will be a great opportunity to learn about the last three or four centuries.

  I have been assigned to the topics of the 18th century and Openness. I don't know a ton about either of the topic so I am in for a treat because I will get the chance to research and learn about all sorts of information that will be new to me. From what I've read on openness there seem to be a lot of debate about how open things need to be I haven't had enough time to actually get my opinion on the matter but it definitely is something that I will be looking into a lot in the coming semester.

In the 18th century there were many new inventions that greatly helped the world to advance. One example of this is the sextant which allowed the user to determine the latitude that they were at. Unfortunately it didn't measure the longitude. As with every problem though someone else took the challenge and figured out how to measure longitude. His name was John Harrison. Without these inventions much of the colonization that happened around the world would not have happened cause sailors would not have been able to navigate properly. Through hard work of people before me I get the chance to enjoy my life with many amenities that otherwise would not exist because of the advancement of others and their wonderful ideas.