Extra Credit Blog Post

According to Copyright Alliance.org, fair use is defined as: 

   "Fair use is an affirmative defense that can be raised in response to claims by a copyright owner that a person is infringing a copyright. Fair use permits a party to use a copyrighted work without the copyright owner’s permission for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. Copyright law does establish four factors that must be considered in deciding whether a use constitutes a fair use. These factors are:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes.
   
   
2. The nature of the copyrighted work.
   
   
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Appropriation is essentially when someone takes the work of another artist with the intention of making it their own in a completely new form, idea, etc., but the finished work that was built on contained too much of the original idea to be grounds. for any of the four factors that constitute fair use. A controversial lawsuit in the music industry during the middle of the 1990s is a moment in history illustrating the rules of fair use and appropriation. 2 Live Crew was sued by Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.with a claim of copyright infringement, and 2 Live Crew lost the lawsuit. The court found that the song created by 2 Live Crew was found unfair in accordance with the first of the four factors. In the same decade in the same genre of music, the rap scene saw another case of copyright infringement with Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," which was found to contain too much of the original content of Queen and David Bowie's hit collab "Under Pressure." Both are absolute jams. 

In terms of fair use, the first thing that comes to mind was AJ's parody for the digital composition project. She created a music video and wrote a parody over The Notorious B.I.G.'s song and she gave credit to the authors' content that she used to create her project. After doing research on my second example, I wanted to talk about Weird Al Yankovic. He is a well-known musical artist famous for his comedic rewrites and parodies of popular songs, one being Amish Paradise, his take of the song Gangster Paradise by Coolio. Over time, the rules of fair use have slowly shifted in favor of the appropriator, for in this situation, Yankovic doesn't legally have to seek out permission to parody an artist's song, however, he actually asks for it anyway. Snaps for our guy.  Under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law, Yankovic and other parodists don't need permission for original artists to satirize their work, as long as royalties are paid. So, there is still a catch. 

Hobbs suggested a strategy to normalize, practice, and get students acquainted with the process of giving credit to those who deserve it and why it is important. The suggestion about assigning students to do a comparison-contrast essay involving two YouTube videos that demonstrate proper etiquette regarding fair use and one that doesn't. 

Academic Honesty will be a prioritized expectation in the learning environment my class and I create, and it is important to provide real-life examples to demonstrate relevancy (and evidence), explain the potential consequences of engaging in academic dishonesty, and celebrate the works of those we appreciate and come to terms with the significance of their works in our lives. It is important that students understand the consequences of appropriation misconduct, fair use guidelines, and copyright infringement not just within the borders of the school, but also out in the "real world." 

Blog Post #8

Wow, what a semester. Looking back, it's almost staggering how much content we've all covered. This blogging experience was absolutely delightful, in terms of a style of digital composition, regularly assessing colleagues' work, having an awards ceremony, and demonstrating how this can be an extremely useful tool of multimodal composition. I feel like a pool of blogs by everyone in the personal learning committee is an exceptional way to promote civic engagement while also encouraging our students to pursue other methods of expressing their thoughts, emotions, or understanding of course content. This is such a convenient way to provide a structure for peer review, keep a log of progress, explore other options of information transferring, and so many other beneficial classroom concepts. I appreciate how the class was not instructed to all use a platform selected by the instructor, but instead exploring the available options and choosing one that we were comfortable with. Liberty and freedom of thought are so much more a priority to me now than they were six months ago. I've done a community log project like this in my Educational Media Theory class years ago, but it was not nearly this productive, beneficial, or functional. I truly regret my lack of promptness in terms of meeting deadlines. My unfortunate display of struggles this semester is not representative of my ability, investment, potential, or philosophy of education. I've been going through it more than I have let on, but this never-ending semester will forever be remembered as a valuable experience and lesson learned. I definitely bit off more than I could chew and counted my chickens before they hatched, and I feel the consequences. But despite all of my complaining, I think this may be the semester I've grown the most in my academic history. My workload was absolutely overwhelming, and many of my assignments were turned in late, but I take pride in the fact that I didn't cut corners and sacrifice quality of work to make up for my lack of time and promptness. This may be the most peer-reviewing I have ever done in a single semester, and I'm so grateful for that because we all know the value and potential of peer review, we just have to ensure the quality of the peer reviews is constructive. I know the voting is over for the Bloscars, but here are my votes:

1. Professionalism-Carrie-The many layers of detail and articulation that Carrie demonstrates in her posts is extraordinary. Providing relevant, valuable visuals such as the deconstruction of the writing process. The structure, organization, flow, and quality of these blog posts feels as if she ties a bow on each one before submitting. 
   
   Link to Carrie's blog-Educational Thoughts With Carrie – Carrie G-P's educational blog for Currins 547 (wordpress.com)
   
   
2. Multimodal Design-AJ-Her posts were always so refreshing and included a variety of information transferring techniques and ways to absorb ideas, even including a Spotify link on her seventh post. 
   
   Link to AJ's blog-Blog | Teaching With Triumph (alexjifas.wixsite.com)
   
   
3. Creativity-Terrence-He writes in a way that as I am reading it makes me feel like he is talking directly to me, we are all aware of the connections that Terrence can make with his writers. It just feels like rich, quality dialogue.
   
   Link to Terrence's blog-Frank Ocean Broke My Heart (terrencereno.blogspot.com)
   
   
4. Civic Engagement-Cody-His blogs were at times controversial in a way that would provoke a beneficial, intellectual conversation. He made frequent references to current events such as the Aaron Rodgers trade. His posts promoted discussion and kept me reading and wanting more. 
   
   Link to Cody's blog-(1) Cody's Substack | UWM English Education Blog | Substack