What is copyright? “In simpler terms, copyright is the right to copy. This means that the original creators of products and anyone they give authorization to are the only ones with the exclusive right to reproduce the work.” –Investopedia.

Why is there copyright? I believe copyright exists to prevent someone from duplicating the original work of another. It exists to protect what we call “intellectual property.” Honestly, I have no idea what that means but from what I figured from Professor Sewslow’s post and what I read on other sites,  intellectual property is unique original creations that necessarily took a significant mental activity to create.

We practice copyright laws to protect that awesome content from getting remixed, modified, or reshared without permission!

We should all be aware of copyright laws. I mean, nobody likes a copycat, right? Maybe. I don’t think all situations are the same but, according to the law, they should be. So let’s be smart about the content we just love to re-share, share, and switch up a little bit!!!

Fair use is a doctrine that lets us use a limited amount of copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder. It is a way to give some liberty to use content without getting into serious trouble. This doctrine should be used more often since many of us have amazing ideas about other people’s work. I believe, most of the time, these ideas enhance the original version in creative ways almost to say, unlike anything else!!!

 

While watching Larry Lessing’s TedTalk, the quote I found most compelling was the following:

“Never before in the history of human culture had it been as professionalized, never before as concentrated, never before as creativity of the millions been as effectively displays, and displays because of these, quote: “infernal machines.”

This quote was referring to another type of machine, but I believe it reflects well with what is going on in digital technology. It clearly identifies the true intentions of those individuals who re-use, re-share and re-shape content. Lessing mentions this later on by saying that people take and recreate other people’s content using digital technologies to say things differently. Lessing also mentions the content serves as tools of creativity that become tools of speech, which I thought was very inspirational. To me, it is clear these people are doing it for the sake of creating something new and not to copy information and call it their own.