I have an hour to write this post and I am pissed. Can I say that on the Interwebz? Let me warn you, that although I often advocate for measured tempered writing, this post is rooted in anger and frustration. I am not sure exactly who the recipient of my rage is, but I know that EMI music and Youtube will take the brunt of my attack. I am also unhappy with the overall concept of copyright, ownership culture, capitalism in general, and the need for our society to commodify every aspect of life to the point of ruining it.

Stop. Breathe. Context.

Over the last ten weeks, my grade ten students have been working hard watching, dissecting and analyzing the film The Wall by Pink Floyd. We have watched the film, listened to the songs, and examined the lyrics. We have discussed the metaphor of walls, the role of artists in the face of authoritative bodies in society, as well several other themes. For their final product, the students have taken the lessons learned in terms of  symbolism and film techniques used by Alan Parker from the 1982 film and applied them to their own videos. Some students have chosen to sing the songs themselves, but most opted to use the existing songs because of the time crunch. They worked hard and created  amazing videos. Short films with depth, sophistication and beautiful cinematography.

In an effort to share the work with as big of an audience as possible, we created this page and posted their videos to Youtube. Within hours some of the videos were blocked in certain countries, because of the copy-righted songs owned by EMI.

“You used copy-righted music on youtube and are now surprised that it has been blocked. That seems silly.”

That is what you are thinking right? Let me explain why I am frustrated with this process.

1. Firstly, I am annoyed by the irregularity and chaos of the screening process. There are thousands of copy-righted videos on Youtube that play without any warnings or blocks year round. There are several copies of the very songs that we have used on Youtube right now! They play without any problems, while our student films are blocked. If you are going to block copy-righted material then block it all.

2. There is no recourse or avenue for us to address our grievance. Who do we contact if we want to claim that the use of this material was  for educational reasons and protected under the Fair Use clause? (Looks like I may owe Youtube an apology, thanks to Fair Use Tube.org I may have found a way to dispute the copyright claim and it looks like my videos have been freed?)

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

A few seconds later it appears that the block has been removed. All my videos still say that third party content has been matched, but no block and no points against my account.

Back to rant…What does it say about a “free” web that Emi and Youtube can simply pick and choose what we are allowed to post. It has been an eye-opening experience to literally run into the wall of ownership and copy-right law. We like to think that the Internet is an open, democratic, free space, but the reality is that it is not. Your average user cannot post what they want, when or where we want. We are confined by what the owners of the spaces and materials tell us is okay.  Really, we have little freedom. I am left asking how do we learn where to carve our own spaces online. I suppose we could post these videos on our own servers, but then we lose the ability to share widely, embed on the web etc…

3. I am irked by the notion that a corporation can own and restrict how we use art. We are not trying to use this material to make money or in any other commercial way. We are simply enjoying the process of derivative art creation,  inspired by songs we love. Why does EMI get to choose what happens to the music once it has been produced? I am not happy with the notion that everything can be copy-righted and owned. These giant companies do not give us the option of even asking to use their material. Let’s say I want to ask them to use this work, where do I start? Can I fill out a form on youtube? Their website? It is as if they have gathered all their toys and said no one else can play with them. If you don’t it- tough! More importantly, does the artist have any say in this process?

We are in the midst of a highly charged, market driven, hyper-capitalistic world where every thing we do, hear, see, create is owned by someone.  Sure we can teach kids about copy-right and creative commons, but what about questioning the very notion of copy-right. How do we teach kids to be critical of who owns what and what that means to each of us in a globalized world? This has been a great teachable moment, because we are forced to look at ownership and use, beyond sticking it to the man and finding some way to sneak onto Youtube, but rather we are forced to ask why does EMI get to choose what happens to this art? (If they do have a choice, why are they not using this) The idea of ephemeral, creative, artistic ideas floating about the internet are not possible if there is a wall telling us what we can and cannot use.

We are not sure what we are going to do. We need to talk about it as a class. Perhaps move the videos to Vimeo and hope for more slack regulation there. Maybe we write to EMI and Youtube and get caught in the maze of bureaucracy. Nothing quite so radicalizing as banging your head against some mad buggers wall. This is, after all, a small school project dealing with media ownership, but what happens when we start talking about Monsanto and their battles with farmers over seed patents? Medicines? Ideas? Where does the ownership and profiting stop?

I know I don’t have any answers. I don’t think that was my point. I needed to vent and perhaps ask to  hear your thoughts and gather some resources. What do you think about what I have said? How can we teach kids to be fair and ethical in a system that seems stacked in favor of the people who own what they experience.

Since sharing this post, I have been given some great resources. The first is RIP- A Remix Manifesto by Brett Gaylor. It comes with a complete .pdf teaching guide. I was also reminded of the great series- Everything is a Remix created by Kirby Ferguson. Watch the first one here and see the rest….well here and here.