Chapter 4
Chapter 4 discussed the importance of copyright which is something I’ve always found interesting. Steamboat Willie entered public domain which is a more recent example people have been talking about. Many things enter public domain every year but people also like spiting big corporations like Disney so it’s more satisfying to take a character like Steamboat Mickey and use his image in ways Disney wouldn’t approve of. I remember when Sherlock Holmes entered public domain last year it had the same sense of spite because Arthur Conan Doyle was also not a great person.
A form of getting around copyright that I am more familiar with is parody. When I started using the internet regularly ten years ago, making parodies of songs was huge on YouTube. I’m still rediscovering songs that are considered classics because I’ve only heard parodies of them when I was a kid. As I discover more music it’s interesting to find where the line is drawn regarding what counts as parody.
Speaking of YouTube, I tend to watch commentary videos and over the years a few people have had to deal with legal issues even though that genre of video falls under fair use. Commentary videos are transformative works that take a movie or whatever peace of content and expand on it be it critique or making jokes.