Having spent a great deal of time on the internet, I’ve read many arguments about copyright over the years. So, nothing in the copyright readings was really new to me. I knew about Creative Commons and how it worked, and I knew about the rules for determining fair use. I didn’t know that different organizations had put together codes for their industry regarding best practices for fair use. I think the two most empowering fair use rules are commentary and parody, but perhaps that’s just because they’re the ones I encounter most. I don’t generally like to blame bad laws on Big Business buying off lawmakers, but with copyright law I think it’s actually the case—we wouldn’t have the ridiculously long copyright protection we do if corporations weren’t trying to squeeze every penny out of their intellectual property before they (reluctantly) give it up.

I haven’t had much experience with copyright myself. I learned about Creative Commons when Newgrounds started their audio portal for sharing music—rather than risk getting sued by the RIAA for pirating music, I started downloading things from Newgrounds that were meant to be shared. Another example would be using the Unity engine to create video games—when you launch your program, it’s branded with a “Powered by Unity” screen before it starts your game—I made a small game in Unity just last semester.