Our library class is coming to an end with our last regular class meeting. Lately we have been talking a lot about copyright laws and how to distinguish whether an item is infringing the law or not. Today we talked about “fair use”. Fair use is like a doctrine or guidline on whether or not the use of some material is considered copyright infringement. The guidlines include four main points. One is the purpose of the use. Is using a book or painting going to make the user money. If someone grabs an author’s work, makes copies, then sells it; that is copyright infringement. Next is the nature of the original work. This means one cannot take someone else’s work change one thing, then claim it as there own. Another is the amount of original work used. For example, if a teacher makes copies for his students of a few pages of someones work, and is used for educational purposes; that is OK. The last is the effect of the use on the market. This means if someone is making a profit of someone elses work, they are infringing the copyright law. In class Mrs. Radom showed how we could all recognize single letters or characters from a copyrighted name. The “S” in Starburst was easy to distinguish. We also discussed the differences between “all right reserved” and “some rights reserved”. I hope we covered everything on the exam becuase I have no clue what we will be tested on.
It’s About That Time April 24, 2008
The end of this semester will come sooner expected for me. It is crunch time where all my teachers put all their due dates on the same day, and some within the same hour. In library class we have been working on our annotated bibliographies and mine is coming along just fine. But Have so much other stuff due. Tomorrow I have a 60 page notebook due. On Monday I have our annotated bibliography due along with a three page paper for an intro class, and a20 minute PowerPoint presentation about architectural trends in coastal NC. Along with all of this, I have my brother’s bachelor party to attend. We are going somewhere in South Carolina and will partying everynight. Hopefully I can manage my time to fulfill all this work that needs to be done. I can’t wait for summer. I am going to South Africa to surf with two of my best friends and we are leaving a week after exams. So its hard to think about all this work while thinking about how many big barrels I’m going to get surfing world class waves.
Bibliography April 10, 2008
Today is the day that our Annotated Bibliography is due. I chose the subject of copyright infringement concentrating on illegal music downloads. Thank God we don’t have to write a paper becuase I’m about papered out! Doing this instead is so much better. I could see in some high level class that an instructor would make the class wirte a 15 page paper with an annotated bibliography just to teach the students about how to do an annotated bibliography. That would make me pretty mad. Well this is just a 100 level class so I knew if we had to write a paper it would only need to be like 2-3 pages. So thank your Mrs. Radom for taking it easy on us. While researching for books to use in the assignment I came across, The Music Business. This book is like a handbook or a guide on how to be succesful in the Music Business. Things like stage presence, a good sound, and distribution are imortant in being a succesful musician. The part that pertains to my subject is the very last chapter. It is about the Internet and how to be aware of copyright infringement and illeagal distribution of ones digital music. This subject is important for me becuase I am a musician that plays in a band. My band went to Atlanta a month ago to record a single and we are awaiting the mastered, master copy. Now this will come to us as a Compact Disc but I know once our singer recieves it in the mail, he’s going to put it right on the internet. With a single I don’t care who has a digital copy of it; but if it was an entire album I would be worried about posting it on the Internet. Hopefully some day I can be a proffesional musician so I don’t ever have to work and hopefully Illegal downloads will stop right around the time we make it big; HUGE!!!
April Showers April 10, 2008
Its April and its all raining down; everything. Work is pilling up for all of my classes. We are beginning our season at work where we start getting busy. And I just got done surfing just north of Jonnie Mercer’s Pier and some A Hole new Cop decided to pick me out of a crowd of about 15 to give a ticket. Oh yeah it’s raining pretty hard. I got a ticket for surfing to close to the pier and the cop is a rookie and new to the beach becuase I have lived here for almost 22 years and I’ve never seen him before. He rolled up in his 2008 tahoe with lights flashing and he was yelling through his loudspeaker at us to move north. So I did. As this happened the waves started to get crappy so I headed in. As I was about to walk north to my truck, I looked over at the cop to see if he was trying to write me a ticket. He was getting back into his truck and was not even looking at me so I knew I was in the clear. Well I felt that I should be honest so I put my board in the sand and ran over to him to say ” the loudspeaker was very distorted and unclear, I couldn’t understand what you were saying; just wanted to let you know.” Then he asked me my name and I said “Eliot Garner”. He wrote it down. Then I asked if I was getting a ticket; he said yup. I was distraught and it was very hard to hold in my anger. (I just wanted to punch him in the face) This is rediculous. A 220$ ticket for being in the water with a surfboard near the pier. Where if I did not have a surfboard, I would have been totally legal. While I waited twenty minutes for him to write the ticket, call it in and my name; a backup officer came out. Oh man I am dangerous we need backup. Hopefully with all the people I know I can get this guy fired and out of my beautiful town.
I know this doesn’t pertain to class at all but I just wanted to let everyone, or whoever reads these blogs, to understand how much of an “A hole” the cops at Wrightsville Beach are. So lookout don’t do anything stupid, like go surfing.
