Copyright!

Copyright. What a thorny issue. I think the main problem I had with copyright was the issue of ownership. Yes, a person owns their ideas, but I also, as a person, believe that ideas should be shared. The originator of the idea should be acknowleged, but...well, like I said. It's a thorny issue.

And now I'm cursing myself for not taking more detailed notes.

Ooh, a subject I do like. Fair use. The subject of fairuse is hotly debated. Is it fair if the originator doesn't like it? is it fair use if the person's been dead for a couple of hundred years? I mean, I'm hardly one to bitch about fair use. I'm downloading a soundtrack for a video game right now. Is what I'm doing illegal? I've spent more money on this game than I have anything else this year. Haven't I paid my dues? According to law, no. And I'm inclined to agree, which is why I'm also buying the soundtrack in hard copy off amazon.

That's what annoys me about copyright and fair use. People bitch about wanting to have things free for the people, but then won't go out and buy the original to support the artists.

Transformative works, however, are a whole different kettle of fish. I love making music videos. They're so much fun, even if I'm not very good at them. They pass the time, they allow for creativity and new interpretations, etc etc. For me remediation, I chose to do a music video. Whether that was a good choice or not I couldn't tell you. I'll have to wait till I get my results back. But the actual act of creating something, even from using someone else's source, is satisfying. It shows a love for the subject matter (or a hate depending on the purpose of the remediation)and a different interpretation that might not necessarily have been picked up by the casual viewer.

I think that's why read only media irritates me so much. Especially i-tunes, which only allows sharing of a song three or four times before it becomes unreadable. I love sharing songs with my friends. Our music collection grows on the singlular songs we share with each other. I usually (when I can find the album) go out and buy the album itself.

And, onto the last part of my notes (hooray) creative commons. My own artwork is under a creative commons license. Boiled down, it means that they can display my work as long as they credit me, they can do derivative works as long as it's under the same license, and they're not allowed to make money off it. Which I'm glad for, but because the license is on an american website, I'm not sure how that works into the Australian market.

An except from the site itself says :

As we are a U.S. based company the laws which govern deviantART are those of the United States of America.

By agreeing to abide by the deviantART Submission Agreement and our Terms of Service you are also agreeing that you will abide by the laws which govern our website.

And also

The bottom line is: Just about anything that is on this site, on the web, on TV, on CD's, on DVD's, in books & in magazines is probably copyrighted by someone.

For further reading, their copyright policy can be found here.

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 FOUR

I've been rather naughty, skipping an entry. I'll go back and write that later.

Today, we were talking about Participatory culture, at first. I gave the example of the book that James Patternson was writing with a bunch of other authors selected from a competition entry, and how those writers co-wrote the book through email and live chat interaction. We had a couple of interesting ones, from choose your own adventure books to riots, of all things.

It was culture jamming that interested me the most; the concept of taking something that's already in the media and changing the meaning. Case in point today, when we were asked to find an ad in a magazine and change the meaning. The one I found was an ad for Johnny Cash's new album. It was fairly innocuous looking, with the words CASH AMERICAN V across it, with a bunch of quotes from different reviewers down along the ad.

What I turned it into, however, is something a little different.



It's amazing what blacking out a couple of words can do. The bottom bit, if you can't see it, says Everyone's talking about Cash.

Lecture/tute two

So, the first assignment is on the Actors in media. Not just the actors who portray the characters, but the producers/fans/development team/ad executives etc.

I have a little chart I drew myself here, that says Actors = Components.

Authors: Original, series/episode/screenwriters/novelisations/fan Authors.
Media: NBC, Paramount, ParamountTV etc etc.

Star Trek was used as an example in the lecture, and the idea wasn't that hard to grasp. It threw me, calling them Actors, however. I guess I think of them more as the behind the scenes, although that's not necessarily true.

more on this and the nature of collaborative media later.

AAAAAAAAAH

I have figured out what I'm going to be using this for! We've got to keep a learning portfolio, and if I can get my scanner working (Downloading the drivers now hooray) I'm going to use this as my assignment/tutorial/learning journal. I'm already working on the first assignment, but I need to run it past my tute lecturer.

I have two ideas for the first assignment, and I'm going to do them at the same time because if one doesn't pan out, I can use the other. One is to turn the first few minutes of Dead Like Me into a comic, with a cover page and all. Five to six pages long. The other is to use George, the main character, to create a twitter feed of the first episode, with her thoughts and snarking. I'm going to run this past my Tute lecturer (when I find out who that is tomorrow or at least I think it is tomorrow) and see how that goes down.

I've already scanned in the cover page idea, and I'll provide a link as soon as I have that updated, as well as taking progress shots to see what changes I make design wise.

AHAH. VICTORY.

Link!

I'm moving the bubble up and changing her face because I drew it all without reference, but there you go! small copy of the front page.

Here is a decidedly ugly link to the finished product. I did it in one night, and I'm not going to bother with shading because that'll just double the amount of time (if not triple it) that I need to spend colouring.

That's the design I'd be using for George, the main character, if I get to do this one. If not, I'll provide a link to the twitter feed.

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.

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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.