Click the image above to scroll throught the PowerPoint presentation.
Appropriation Art and Copyright: Do Layperson Judgments of Image Similarity Match Legal Constructs?
Intellectual property law is central to the American legal system. It is granted in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. The goal of this protection is to “Promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries”.
Since the days of the founding fathers, the ‘limited times’ interpretation for copyrights has been been greatly enlarged to now encompass the life of the author plus 70 years. Many artists and corporations use current copyright laws to take legal action against those whom they view as having infringed on their intellectual property.
However, infringement does not occur as long as the new work is ‘transformative’. Vincent Van Gogh did studies of other artist’s works, and appropriation art has been used by other famous artists such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. These derivative works have added to the artistic richness of society, they have had impact on Presidential elections (see Shepard Fairey’s Obama ‘Hope’ poster) and they sometimes sell for vast sums of money (see Lichtenstein’s ‘Sleeping Girl’ which went for $45 million at auction). However, these works might be considered copyright infringement and therefore illegal for the artists to produce.
This study seeks to identify what people consider ‘transformative’, and whether they use the legal constructs created by the courts in their judgments. This study also examines the effects of authorship awareness on judgments about transfromativeness, as well as how personal characteristics such as viewers’ artistic and technological experience contributes to judgments about works of appropriation art.
(This slideshow is taken from Vremmy Kahn’s Senior Honors Thesis presentation, in the Communication Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.)
For more information on the Senior Honors Program at UCSB, click here.
Lately in Middle East news it seems that all you hear about is Iran and their attempt to acquire a Nuclear Bomb. There is also a lot of talk about a possible Israeli strike on Iran, and it may seem that a nuclear armed Iran would pose a threat to Israel alone. In fact, this is not the case. A nuclear armed Iran poses a threat to the entire Middle East region, Europe, the United States of America, and indeed, the entire world. Iran is considered the worlds largest state sponsor of terror by the U.S., and they have attacked us in the past through their proxy terror organizations. Iran was found to have aided Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks by a Manhattan District Court Judge in 2011. A nuclear armed Iran would also set off a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world, with other Arab states following in an attempt to combat Iranian dominance. Americans are tired of a decade of war in the Middle East and we do not want to become embroiled in a conflict with Iran that would undoubtedly be much bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan. But we have learned our lesson in WW2 that U.S. isolationism is a failed policy, and we must accept our role as world leader no matter how painful it may be at times. Hopefully a military conflict can be avoided, but we cannot let one of the most dangerous regimes acquire the most dangerous weapon on earth; That scenario would be much worse for everyone. Remember that Iran’s hateful speech refers to the U.S. as ‘The Big Satan’ and Israel as ‘The Little Satan’. A nuclear armed Iran is a threat to the entire world, Israel just happens to be first in their sights.
Our shaky relations with Iran stem back to the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was stormed, and 52 American hostages were held for 444 days. This attack scarred our country, and introduced us to the extremist elements inside of Iran. Anyone who watched the movie ‘Argo’, will partially know the trauma that those Americans trapped in Iran felt, as the terror comes alive on screen. Iran supports many global terrorist groups through funding and training. One of these terror groups is Hezbollah, which has carried out attacks against the United States. In 1983 Hezbollah used suicide bombers to attack the United States Embassy in Lebanon killing 63 and wounding 120. That same year Hezbollah used suicide bombers to attack the U.S. Marine Barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 Americans. In 1985 members of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad hijacked TWA flight 847, holding the hostages for 3 days and killing U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem. In 1992 Iran backed terror groups used suicide bombers to attack the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires killing 29 and wounding 242. A 1994 attack on the AMIA building in Buenos Aires killed 85 and wounded over 300. In 1996 Iran was again linked to the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 were wounded. For many years Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have indiscriminately attacked the civilian population of Israel with rockets funded and provided by Iran. The links to Iranian terror do not stop there however.
More recently, Iran has been tied to the deaths of countless U.S. servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan, with their funding and arming of insurgents. Former United States Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has stated “The Iranians today, we have clear evidence, are providing the very weapons that are causing U.S. servicemen and women to die. That’s clear, that’s not refuted, that’s not hawkish, that’s not shaded. That is the fact.” In 2011, Iranian linked agents attempted to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington D.C. using explosives, in a plot that sounds like a movie script. Most striking of all, Iran was found to have played a role in the 9/11 attacks, by a federal district court in Manhattan in December 2011. In Havlish v bin Laden, Judge George B. Daniels ruled that “Iran and Hezbollah meterially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case.” This is quite a shocking revelation, and one which might not be known by the general public. Could you imagine a nuclear weapon in the hands of those who helped attack us on 9/11? As if all of that wasn’t enough, there are actually more reasons why Iran must not have a nuclear weapon.
Besides their history of state sponsored terrorism against U.S. interests and allies, Iran getting a nuclear bomb would set off a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world. Sunni Saudi Arabia would seek to acquire the weapon to counter the power of their Shia Iran neighbors, followed by Egypt, Syria, Libya and any other tin pot dictator who wanted the protection that a nuclear weapon provides. The fear is not so much that Iran would actually use the bomb once they have it, but that the weapon would find it’s way to the hands of one of the terrorist groups they support. In the event of a nuclear attack on U.S. interests in the Middle East, Iran would have plausible deniability, and claim they had no part in it. This nuclear umbrella, which would be provided to Iranian backed terrorists across the Middle East, would embolden radicals and threaten moderates. Our moderate Gulf State allies face a direct threat from Iran who is trying to assert it’s dominance in the region. According to wikileaks documents, in 2008 Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah urged a strike on Iran’s nuclear program to “cut off the head of the snake.” According to a 2010 Reuters report on the leaks and what they exposed about moderate Gulf State’s sentiments regarding Iran “The Bahraini king also said Iran’s nuclear programme should be halted by any means, and the crown prince of the emirate of Abu Dhabi saw “the logic of war dominating” when it comes to dealing with the Iranian threat.” We must stand by our moderate friends in the region against the attempt by Iran at regional hegemonic power; They will be the first to suffer from a nuclear armed Iran.
After WW1 Americans were sick and tired of wars abroad, and were much more concerned with fixing our economic problems at home. The United States remained neutral during much of WW2, until the battle came to us on December 7, 1941 in the form of Pearl Harbor. Again, war came to us on September 11, 2001. We did not ask for it, but we will fight. The urge to turn our backs and leave the Middle East to take care of its own problems is not a responsible endeavor. It assumes that if we leave the world alone, the world will leave us alone. We have to really open our eyes to the possibility that not all people seek peace, and that evil really does exist in the world. Nazi Germany taught us that real evil does exist, and that we must fight it wherever it rears its head. It is hard for many of us to come to grips with this idea while we live in America, a land of peace and freedom rivaled by few nations in the world. However, there are those out there who would kill us simply because of our freedoms. The Iranian people have tried to rise up against their brutal, dictatorial, theocratic regime in 1999, in 2009, and again in 2011. Each time they were met with bullets. Our fight is not with the people of Iran, it is with the mad men who run their country. The only peaceful solution is for their leaders to reverse the country’s nuclear position, or for the people of Iran to successfully topple their government, neither of which seems plausible. The time for action is drawing near as they get closer to completing their weapon. Do not be fooled; There is only one nation that can confront the threat. It is the United States of America, not Israel, and not the moderate Gulf States. We will be challenged again as we have in the past. Will we turn our backs and hope for peace, allowing a brutal terrorist regime to acquire the most lethal weapon ever created? Or, will we harden our resolve and stand up to evil once more as we have in the past. The choice is yours.
This is how I greeted Gilberto Gil after I had the pleasure of meeting him after his rousing performance at UCSB. The packed house of 850 people, danced, and sang in the aisles. There was an aura in the air that a great musician is present. After his first song Festa Na Fé, he greets the crowd and took them by the hand. He explained eloquently the history of Forró, how it came from the large parties open to the public. When Brazilians tried to say “For All” it came out sounding like “Forró”. Language is always changing, and this is a good example of Brazilians taking something from another culture and making it their own. (Antropófagia)
But of course, when Gil does it on stage only the word ‘perfection’ can be used to sum up the experience. He moves like Jagger across the stage, giving a history lesson of the different sub-genres in between songs in which the whole audience is shaking their hips and grooving. He covers Bob Marley ‘No Woman, No Cry’ with a Brazilian twist. Gil transcends genre. He played songs of Luis Gonzaga, or ‘Gonzagão’, the man responsible for popularizing Brazilian Northeastern music. The band is tight. Every musician on the same note, the rhythm blaring in typical fashion, the band’s performance is amazing.
After the show I had the great honor to meet Gil backstage. I sat next to him while the school news reporter asked him questions, and later I asked him some of my own. I asked about protest, and if there are parallels today to 1969. He explained the history of language and the Brazilian culture. He explained that as Duke Ellington used to say, “There are two kinds of music, good music and bad music”. Cleverly the name of the concert, was Gilberto Gil “For All ” presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures series.
In the video above, a student news reporter from The Daily Nexus interviews Gilberto Gil, while he sits next to UCSB Professora Élide Oliver.
The video below shows Gilberto Gil covering Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ at the concert. Video below was taken by random audience member.
How does the media effect us and more importantly impressionable youth? Do you pick up the mannerisms of your favorite actors and copy what you see in TV and Movies?
Social Learning Theory suggests that we can learn and model new behaviors from viewing others perform them, especially when there is a perceived incentive to copy the behavior.
In the case of smoking cigarettes and youth, the incentive is to be cool. Just look at the photo above, don’t you want to look like them?
View this presentation which describes the issue and applies Social Learning Theory to better understand the process of modeling behavior seen on screen.
The internet will always be free. It is the new digital frontier where censorship will never exist and every opinion is equal. Right? Well, not exactly. The internet is a powerful tool that is now a part of the lives of most people living in the developed world. It can be used for mundane tasks such as watching YouTube, or utilized to overthrow oppressive regimes, as was witnessed during the Arab Spring. The idea that the internet is, and should continue to be, completely free and non discriminatory, is a concept known as network neutrality or net neutrality. In the United States, the FCC has passed laws in favor of net neutrality, laying out three basic rules: Transparency, no blocking, and no unreasonable discrimination. However, there are those, including large internet service providers, who do not see this as a right, and do not agree with the principles of net neutrality. The legislation passed by the FCC is being challenged in court by big telecom companies Verizon and MetroPCS. The fight over the future of the internet is ongoing, as it continues to appear in the headlines, with no clear winner in sight. At stake, is the freedom to send and receive information, in any form, which has been granted to us by the internet as we know it today; A freedom which we have come to expect. The internet of the future however, might look very different than it does today.
A principle just as American as freedom is capitalism, and these two imperatives come head to head in the debate over net neutrality. Proponents of free internet want to preserve it’s neutrality, while large telecom companies have an economic interest in controlling bandwidth. Internet service providers (ISP’s) such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have been at the forefront of the fight against net neutrality. They want control over bandwidth, especially in the wireless market where space is more limited. Proponents of net neutrality argue that you cannot trust large corporations to focus on anything but making money. Comcast for example, is also a provider of cable television, which the internet is starting to come into direct competition with due to online video. It is in their economic interest to throttle speeds of users who are participating in sharing online video. In fact, in 2007 Comcast entirely blocked the ability of its users to share files on BitTorrent, in direct conflict with the concept of ISP’s being neutral to the content of it’s users (some who share files illegally, while many share files legally on BitTorrent). The FCC tried to stop this behavior, but Comcast ended up winning the legal battle throwing into question whether the FCC has the power to regulate the internet. In 2010 the FCC authored a report laying out guidelines for net neutrality which include transparency, no blocking, and no unreasonable discrimination. According to the report “The internet’s openness promotes innovation, investment, competition, free expression and other national broadband goals”. Verizon and MetroPCS have taken the FCC to court regarding the legality of the FCC’s jurisdiction over the internet, in a case which is ongoing.
Proponents of net neutrality are passionate about keeping the internet a free place, where ISP’s are content neutral, and in essence act solely as a delivery system, without ulterior motives based on corporate profit. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, and Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor, are two of the most outspoken proponents in favor of net neutrality. Wu is a former student of Lessig, having studied under him at Harvard Law, and he is actually the one credited with coining the term net neutrality. Both men have helped shape current public policy, having served on advisory panels to the FCC regarding net neutrality. Wu argues for net neutrality in a Darwinian evolutionary sense, in which, when allowed to operate freely, the strongest services and applications on the web will survive based on the response from consumers. In an internet which services are given preferential treatment by ISP’s, this is not the case. A recent example of this principle is the Xfinity app from Comcast, which operates on the Xbox360 game console. Comcast has decided that when internet video is streamed through this service, it will not detract from the users alloted monthly bandwidth of 250 gigabytes, giving an edge to this application over Hulu, which performs the same service. This is one of the fears: That ISP’s will provide preferential treatment and allow faster bandwidth to services that are aligned with their interests, while slowing services to those that are not directly aligned with their short term profit goals. The free market has never been able to keep itself in line with the public interest. Regulation of the financial markets are currently in place and the internet should be no different.
One of the main reasons for net neutrality is to keep the internet a free forum for expression and innovation, which is in the public interest. ISP’s need to be transparent in their broadband network management practices to ensure the public knows how they operate. According to the 2010 FCC report, widespread interference with the internet’s openness would have a chilling effect on innovation. Large ISP’s would contract with innovators to give preferential access to their services and applications, causing those not in contract with the large ISP’s to slow innovation due to the belief that their ideas would be blocked. Lawrence Lessig states that “the architecture (of the internet), and the competitive forces it assures, is the only interesting thing at stake in this battle over net neutrality.” In a world without net neutrality, it would only matter whether an innovator was in contract with a large ISP. The great ideas like YouTube and Google would be blocked unless the ISP deemed it worthy. Ralf Bendrath and Milton Muellar have studied the dangers of a world with no network neutrality, specifically as it relates to deep packet inspection. DPI allows ISP’s to know exactly what you are doing on the internet in real time, and if they wished, to be able to react to it by slowing your connection or blocking it to certain sites and services. This is why broadband network management practices must be transparent: So that government agencies like the FCC and users themselves, can know how ISP’s are handling information on the internet.
Opponents of net neutrality also try to prove that innovation and investment will be stifled due to enforcement by the FCC. This argument is made from an economic perspective however, rather than a creative one. Robert Hahn and Scott Wallsten, in an article titled “The Economics of Net Neutrality”, argue that a mandate would erode incentives to provide new applications and services from ever being developed.” The large ISP’s are spending vast amounts of money on developing infrastructure providing the backbone for the internet, and net neutrality limits the profit they can make. John Thorne, a senior vice president at Verizon has accused companies like Google of riding on the coattails of the the ISP’s, who are spending the real money and doing the real work, in his opinion. According to Thorne, “The only way we are going to attract the truly huge amounts of capital needed to build out these networks is to strike down governmental entry barriers and allow providers to realize profits.” In this outlook on net neutrality, where profits are center stage, governmental oversight limits the profit ISP’s can make, which in turn limits investments into expanding infrastructure. With so much seemingly unimportant activity happening on the internet it seems logical for ISP’s to be able to prioritize information based on deep packet inspection. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has pointed to telemedicine as an example of this, where important medical information should be given preferential speeds over someone watching cat videos on YouTube. However this is preferential treatment is not allowed under the FCC’s guidelines for net neutrality. Also, with the huge amounts of data being used Telecom companies argue that they should be able to prioritize some information over others. It has been seen however, like in the Case of Comcast, that large telecom companies cannot be trusted to make decisions in the public interest, and allowing the prioritization of data on the internet is a slippery slope.
I think the issue of net neutrality is one of the most important of our time. The decisions made today, and the outcomes of pending cases, like that of Verizon v. FCC, will shape the future of the internet as we know it. The Arab Spring was said to have been an internet revolution, unknown bloggers can break national stories from their homes, and applications are being created that enhance our lives. The great thing about the internet is that it levels the playing field; All information is treated equally and the gatekeepers have less power in this domain. The internet must be kept free and unfettered for the good of mankind, and for the sake of freedom. In laying out the 2010 guidelines for net neutrality, the FCC took an important step “to preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression.” Their legal right to preserve a neutral internet must be upheld.
sources:
Federal Communications Commission, (n.d.). In the matter of preserving the open internet gn docket no. 09-191
Bendrath, R., & Milton, M. (2011). governancethe end of the net as we know it? deep packet inspection and internet . New Media & Society, 13(7), 1142-1160.
Hahn, R., & Wallsten, S. (2006). The economics of net neutrality.