Symposium 3 More on legal matters

–          Materials : Books/Films/ Music – the way it is linear, shapes our perception and understanding about beginning, middle, and end. They have beginning and end because they have edges, eg. book has cover.  How about blog that has no edge? Blog do not have beginning or end because it’s ‘shape’ has no edges. Posts within blog is always link to other page, source, and web like a never ending cycle.

Question for symposium…

1. How much freedom do we have when writing critically of others or others’ work before we become liable for defamation or copyright infringement?

• The idea of freedom is always open to question and it is never could be interpreted in one way, it depends with the current law and is constantly changing.
• Easy way to no be considered defaming/defamatory – “Don’t write mean/derogatory stuff about people, those stuff will stay there forever and people will found out.”
• Accusation about someone which is wrong is defamation, although in some cases if it’s true you might walk away, but it rarely happens.
• Be careful between opinion and criticism, Opinion is what you think about someone without proof only feelings. While Criticism is accusation on something or someone with proof.
• It does not matter what you think, it is what the audience says matter. If someone say you are rude, then you are rude. We cannot protect ourselves.
• Copyright issue is also confusing, another easy way is to always mention about the creator and image and link it back, if the creator ask you to put it down then put it down. DO NOT USE copyright materials in movie, examples is some producer create a movie with some artist lyrics and is sued for copyright infringement. Youtube is grey areas.

2. Copyright protects published content, however this protection does not extend to the ideas or concepts that this content was based on. At what point does content or “fact” become an idea? And vice versa? For example, if someone were to publish the ‘secret’ or methods to creating content (for example someone were to reveal a magician’s trick, or the recipe to the big mac secret sauce) does that constitute copyright infringement?

• Ideas CANNOT be copyrighted, the process of something can be patent but not ideas. For example if someone have an idea about curing aids, then that idea cannot be copyright however the process to make cure can be patented.

3. How are copyright laws policed, and who is responsible for policing them? It is policed civilly by the government law and police.

It was an interesting day for me, the fog clears up a bit but I still have a lot of confusion on this legal matters. Coming from a country that have very little care on law especially the internet, this matters is a bit difficult for me to understand and comprehend!