Tag Archives: #StarWars

Fair Use and U.S. Copyright Laws

Authoring and giving permissions are the rights of the owner of the copyright to the people who want to reproduce for their purposes. “One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords” (Copyright) and “One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of “fair use.”” (Fair use). The fair use was contained in section 107 through section 118 of U.S copyright law. From section 107, there are many various purposes for reproducing work may be considered fair. Also, there are four main principles to be considered in determining that it violates to the copyright law or not. They are characteristics with purposes, the nature, the quantity with substantiality and the potential value of the reproducing work.

For the “Star War Fan Film”, I think it violated to the U.S copyright law because it used the original video from the movie to make commercial video by modifying in the end.  “The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work” and “The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes “(Fair use).  For the “Star Wars Saga”, in my opinion, it violated to the U.S copyright law as well as the “Star War Fan Film” did. The video maker still used the original video from the movie but this time, the video owner modified the video by combining multiple scenes of “Star Wars”. “The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole” (Fair Use).

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@Samai14

I think both videos may or may not be legal in terms of Fair Use and U.S. copyright laws. Both videos give credit to the original name “star wars” on their video titles. The presentations and message are different from each other.  The star wars saga is just scenes from the original movie but with different background music than the real star wars theme song. Even though they use some scenes from the original movie it may not be legal because the U.S. copyright office states “copyrightable works include the following categories:  motion pictures and other audiovisual works”.  The other video is just trying to advertise Mt.Dew.  Although the same characters are in both videos they have different physical appearance. These videos may not be legal because the U.S. copyright office states “Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work.” This is basically saying that no matter how much you change you need to ask for the owner’s permission in order to make those changes.  These videos are tricky to explain if they are legal or not.

Bog 5: Fair use

@kylemcgee77

In modern media, there is a lot of debate on the subject of what is fair use or copyright infringement. When it comes to the YouTube vide “Star Wars Fan Film – Essence of the Force,” I feel that this media was close to being fair use but in the end was more of a copyright issue. The video’s format is obviously based off of Star Wars themes. From the intro until the end, it is just like a Star Wars film. With proper credit, this would be fine because it is essentially a tribute film, but in the end it was used for promoting a product (Mountain Dew). Videos are not in fair use if “used upon the potential market…”

I feel that the other video, “Star Wars Saga (The Best Trance Remix Montage)” was fair use. Fair use is determined by whether the material has “affect on the value of the copyrighted work” (Copyright). I feel the video is not copyright infringement because the author is using movie clips from Star Wars to make their video more appealing. It sets the mood for the remix. With proper crediting, the use of these images is in fair use. Like the previous video, I feel the clips were used for tribute and admiration. The original copyrighted audio from the movie was replaced with an original soundtrack.

There is definitely a fine line between what is and is not fair use. It is difficult to be original with media because many “new” ideas were influenced by previous work.

#dtcv

In A Blog Post Far Far Away

@YakustaLeader

For this weeks multimedia, we were to look at star wars youtube videos. However, we were not watching the movies, instead they were parodies and clips. The first video “Star Wars Fan Film: The Essence of the Force” was pretty original and did not seem to go against any copyright or Fair Use laws. There were a coupld of similarities, but the ideas were original and it seemed that it was more for a Mountain Dew commerical or advertisement than something that was made from a copyright. The second clip “Star Wars Saga (The Best Trance Remix Montage)” did not seem to violate any laws, to say…. However they did use clips from the films in a mix and probably did not get permission from the makers. But it wasn’t to make a movie or anything like that. The video was a bunch of clips from the films yes, but they were all mixed into one video and electric music was added into the video for background music. So technically if you think that using the clips violates the copyrights, then yes it violated them. But since it wasn’t for a movie of their own and more like a music video then it didn’t.

Copyright and Fair Use

@PerrinKyla

Copyright and fair use laws can be interpreted in many different ways, but it is ultimately up to the federal court to decide what is and isn’t a copyrighted production and what is a fare use production. In the first Star Wars video, “Star Wars Fan Film – Essence of the Force,” it seems like it is suppose to be a Mountain Dew commercial. I would argue that the clips from the Star Wars movies are fair use because it could be said that all the clips transform it into a parody of the Star Wars movies. However, it is said that even parodies have been sued in a federal court for infringement. There is also a question in this video of whether or not this is a real commercial or video of Mountain Dew. It says at the end of the video that the video is copyrighted but it doesn’t say what corporation copyrighted it. In the second video “Star Wars Saga (The Best Trance Remix Montage),” it is similar in the terms of being considered under fair use, but the only big difference is the music. There is a question in this video of whether or not the music is original, or if the maker of this video just took the music from somewhere else and put it to this video. In my opinion it seems that no matter what someone creates it can always be seen as plagiarized. “All ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and used daily…” (Jonathan Lethem pg.68).