on referencing, texts and sugar crashing (also perhaps copyright)

Referencing is kicking my ass. I keep forgetting to reference the actual text in my work. APA referencing has so many rules that it feels like I'm trying to navigate a minefield with a stick. Not exactly the best method and I'm more likely to get blown up. And I'd rather keep my limbs intact, thanks.

Although I do like having this laptop so I can update this blog DURING my tute.

now, onto the lecture.

We talked about copyright. My own work is under a creative commons copyright agreement. I'll have to look it up (ahh, here it is) but the creative commons license notes I took are as follows.

CREATIVE COMMONS

Creators choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work:

- Attribution: you let others copy, distribute, display and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it, but only if they give you credit in the way you request.

- Share alike: you allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the one that governs your work

- Noncommercial: you let others distribute it for non-commercial purposes only.

- No derivative works

---


Also, Fair use.

Fair use factors are:

-The purpose and character of the use

-The nature of the copyright work

-The amount of sustainability of the portion used

-The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
--

So as far as I'm aware, nobody can post my work or create a derivative work without asking me. Which is an interesting idea, but doesn't work so well in practice. Another thing I have noticed (with regards to
DeviantArt in general) is that most people do not pay attention to a Creative Commons license. It's free, which might be a part of the problem, but websites and other people can take and modify it however they wish without asking permission, and there is little to no recourse for the artist. Because the website is based in America, unless you're american you don't have access to their legal system.

So I can see where copyright might be problematic. The remediation and transformative works clause was fairly interesting as well. I think it's 10% of the primary source can be used before it becomes plagarism? But remediating isn't the same as transforming. Remediating is just spreading, honestly. Opening it up to new avenues. Transformative works takes the actual text and makes it into something different, based off the original. At least, that's what I got out of it.

(I am, however, on a sugar crash)

Ho hum bang the doldrums

I ended up changing my remediation project, due to physical constraints. My hands are screwing up and I can't do the comic pages, like I wanted. I'm doing a music video instead, using footage from silent hill, similar to another movie I've made before. I'm hoping I don't need to download a lot of the footage again, because that might be problematic. Windows movie maker serves well enough with regards to making a video though. Since I've done it before, I might follow the same model as my old one, remediating Silent Hill Footage into a music video with a song by a band called Resicover, named I consume you. I'll make the song available for download later. (EDIT) Actually, changed the song. Whee. And the game subject. What. D:

The whole idea behind Silent Hill fascinates me. I'm not entierly sure why. I'm a huge horror fan, so that might have something to do with it. It just hits all the right buttons. And the good guys don't always win. In fact, usually the good guys are at fault for what's going on in the first place. I'm hoping I can get across just how much I adore this series and how much fun it is as I go through the process of remediating.

Tute 1!

So I got the go-ahead on the comic idea, which I'm immensely pleased about. I'll see how many draft pages I can churn out. I want to get a head start on my assignments so I don't fall behind, like I did a while back.

The class was interesting. I'm pretty sure I have a horrendously loud voice, and I'm kind of worried about dominating conversation. Everyone seems pretty cool though, and we got to have some really interesting discussions, even if I did manage to embarass myself. The issue of Morality vs News Sharing was a rather interesting subject, so I'll have to think more on that and write some more tonight. I know we're only supposed to do twelve entries but I think I'll be doing one after every lecture and tute, and also progress on assignments. It makes sense for me to keep this up once I've started.

---

Okay, so. I've ruminated extensively (slept on it, honestly) and decided I'm going to talk about Censorship and Gaming for a while. The reading we had to do ( The War BetweenEffects and Meaning : Rethinking the Video Game Violence Debate By Henry Jenkins)was about censorship and the way it affects Video Games, and arguments against it.

I feel fairly strongly on this subject. I've been playing video games since I was fairly young, and I would classify myself as a Gamer. I won't get into gender equality and video games, because that's another subject I feel fairly strongly on, but I will say that censorship and games is something that needs to be taken fairly seriously.

Violence in games is no different from violence in movies. Both suspend disbelief and want to make you feel as if you are the character, and you are in the situation they find themselves in. With video games this is a little more immediate, although the same narrative situations apply. Your character (or characters) go through a development process. I'll use Grand Theft Auto Four as an example. It's a fairly violent game. You can run people over, kill them and steal their cash, affect the course of the game depending on who you kill and don't kill. The main challenge is to NOT break any laws, as opposed to breaking them. That's rediculously easy. But the main character, Nico, goes through a moral and ethical change as time goes on. He starts out (not completely) ignorant of the way things work, and as the game progresses and you go through the missions, it shows how he comes to conclusions that will affect not only the way he sees the world, but how the world sees him.

It is a fairly heavy moral lesson. It's not something that's just thrown on top of the violence, it is a part of the way the violence changes the character. Depending on what you do, Nico develops in different ways.

The same can be said for Fable. This game gives you moral choices to make, and that determines how your character develops, whether they be good, evil or neutral. Maintaining a neutral balance is the strongest challenge of the game, and depending on how you play it, you may end up with a completely different character to how you set out.

Those are just two examples (There are more provided in the article) that show that these games DO try to teach moral lessons, even if they're not doing it conciously. Censoring games and denying people the right to explore these moral and ethical dilemmas for themselves is not only detrimental, but plain wrong minded.

aaaaaaand that's the end of my mini-essay.