Free copyright, fair use, appropriation, and piracy

Copyright, Fair Use, Appropriation and Piracy

Copyrights have restricted the ability to use someone else's work. However, with the advent of fair use policies individuals can now use part of others' work for non-commercial purpose. Internet is flooded with examples showing instances of fair use policy. Use of these policies is further augmented by advent of new technologies such as YouTube.

"Free": Copyright, Fair Use, Appropriation & Piracy

As technology is progressing, businesses are facing an increasing number of complexities every day, whereas, the consumers are enjoying a lot of ease in getting goods and services they require. One such problem majority of the businesses are facing is of use of data such as music, without the consent of the user. Websites such as YouTube have made it possible for information especially music to be transferred to users within minutes irrespective of the consent of the user. Cayari stated that when YouTube was designed in 2005 it had only 100 million per day views but in 2008 it went on to have 100 million viewers per day belonging to USA only. Hence, various copyright, fair use, appropriation & piracy policies have been introduced (2).

The fair use strategy doesn't have an exact and typical meaning. Defining whether a work is fair use or not depends on four factors. Marcus in his work reports that the section 107 considers fair use as a perimeter on special privileges and identifies the following four features that can help define whether the use is fair use or not:

1. The reason for using the work. This includes whether the work is used for money-making or non-commercial use.

2. The nature of the copyrighted material;

3. The portion of the work used as compared to the entire copyrighted work; and

4. The impact use of copyrighted work has on the possible market or the worth of the original material (12).

The fair use policies are being used by artists especially the emerging ones in the modern days. Fair use policies permit the person to copy a certain amount of someone else's work for a limited purpose. One such example is of the dancer Carmen De Lavallade and her husband-choreographer Geoffrey Holder.

Dance Heritage Coalition stated that this couple released their biography on personal and professional dance partnership in 2009 (1). They used the fair use privilege on the music and videotape of all the dance clips contained by the movie. This documentary was completed since a long time period but it failed to get released in public as it had excessively costly rights to music and tape. Hence, after a lot of effort from the directors as well as a team of lawyers this documentary was released after it had obtained a fair use claim. As the motive behind the use of the copyright material was not commercial, the fair use claim was accepted and the documentary was allowed to be released.

History is a proof of the fact that fair use claims have been used from the very beginning till the existing times. Recently, the invention of YouTube has augmented the use of this policy as people use it commonly to provide the viewers with highly creative works such as remixes, mashups, parodies and so on of the original work. Use of fair claims is common in all fields of arts and is not limited to one field only.

One of the most distinguished examples for this sort of claim is the Tom Forsythe "Barbie In the blender." In his work, he snapped a sequence of pictures showing the Mattel doll in different unappealing circumstances and labeled it as the Food chain Barbie. However, his work was not appreciated by Mattel and as a result of this; they took a legal action against the photographer stating that he had violated the copyright laws. The photographer through his parody work wanted to send across a message to his audience that the doll didn't represent the perfect American idol girl which the Mattel had shown in their marketing gimmicks. However, the court presented a decision in favor of the photographer and as a result his work qualified for the fair use claim.

Image 1: Tjcenter: Art On Trial

Furthermore, in 2007 Stephanie Lenz posted a video in which her children were dancing on a song "Let's go crazy" on YouTube. As a result of this activity, the universal music corporation sued her under the copyright laws. In order to take refugee from these invalid assertions, she made a fair use claim for all the material that had copyrights. The video was only twenty nine seconds long and the music was near to being audible for only twenty seconds. If these fair use claim wouldn't have been made an innocent women and her family would have been sued for doing something that they didn't do intentionally. The purpose of the video was to show the children dancing which wasn't understood by universal authorities. It can be supported by the fact that the quality of music in the video was extremely poor and therefore, the music was inaudible.

What comes under copyright violation and what is secured under fair use claim is still unclear amongst the people. Many think that even the thumbnails shown in a search engine and their placement on their own site is a violation of the copyrights. In reality this is not a violation as it doesn't have any commercial purpose neither does this act restrict the pictures possible market for trade. Furthermore, there was a huge difference between the real picture and the one available on the search engine as the quality of pictures on search engine is extremely poor. In order to get a clear picture of what is fair use law and the circumstances under which it can be used following video link can be visited. http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/related-materials/codes/code-best-practices-fair-use-online-video .

As time is progressing, awareness about fair use policy is increasing all across the globe and many people are in favor of such claims. The reason is the fact that such claims allow creativity. For instance, different parodies that are being done are not only a source of entertainment, but are also a unique way of sending across a message to a huge group of viewers.

Robbins said that different artists such as film producers, director, and many others can and should reap benefits from fair use policy, one of the most influential exclusions of copyrights (11). Fair use tends to release pressure on the individuals against copyrights otherwise an oppressive monopoly is possible, in situations where the artist has a well-defined, clear cut and preferably a logical reasoning for using the material.