The motivation for my project about expanding knowledge related to copyright and protection of intellectual properties originates from a high school project that I found to be very fun to research and educate my peers on.
The class assignment was to create a presentation based around law in one fashion or another. Most of my fellow students focused on mainstream and topical issues, such as women’s body autonomy and the relationship between Taiwan and China. I decided to focus on a less blatantly controversial and divisive topic; copyright.
I have mixed feelings when looking back on my project. Looking at it in a positive light, I made it a great general introduction to the concept of copyright and some issues regarding the rules that companies and the public adhere to. One such rule that I enjoyed talking about was the public domain and what it includes and excludes with it’s rules. The example I used was that the iteration of Mickey Mouse in black and white without gloves is free to use by anyone in the public sphere, but once you add color or gloves, Disney is then allowed to initiate a copyright claim over whatever work contained Mickey Mouse. I also explained how copyright laws allow for a work to be heavily protected for up to seventy-five years after the death of the creator, and I used this fact to argue that companies should not be allowed to have such a strong grasp over their properties so as to not create a pseudo-monopoly of an idea if they apply it far too broadly (e.g. Harry Potter’s copyright being used to crackdown on any version of a magical school)
However, looking back on the script and reviewing what I actually talked about, there is a lot of room for improvement. One critical part of my project that I look back on in disappointment is how I focused more on specific examples such as the Disney company and Games Workshop. These examples were relevant to myself, as I was invested in hobbies and activities related to both companies, however my writing bordered on being a personalized rant over an objective take on their copyright practices. A quote from my reader notes in reference to Games Workshop’s copyright policy taking down fan-animations: “Games Workshop has made copyright become their weapon to control how their products are talked about and shown online and offline.” First of all, I definitely could have written that to a high quality. Secondly and more importantly, that is such an aggressive accusation that I displayed no examples to back up in order to substantiate. My sources when referring to examples of copyright abuse were videos from online personalities I was biased towards liking before starting the project.
For this Inquiry Project in comparison, I want to focus on being far more objective and removed from the problem. I want this to be more like a textbook from a source removed from bias where possible instead of a rant from someone annoyed that a company was mean to their favorite online personalities. By the time of my next Inquiry Post, I plan on having an outline of what important info I want to include into the quasi-textbook post and timeline of copyright, as well as a list of upcoming issues that are of interest.(for example, recently a supreme court case just wrapped up saying that content created by artificial intelligence are not qualified to be protected under copyright US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material | Reuters)
(Disclaimer: I did not include any photos of my presentation, as I could not find the sources of the photos attached to it. Ironic, huh?)