Iwastesomuchtime.com is a social media sight where people can submit their drawings, YouTube videos, homemade videos, other user generated content, and of course cat videos to share with others as long as it gets approved by the creators of the website. Iwastesomuchtime.com is not as popular as other social media sites, such as Facebook and YouTube so they don’t have section of their website devoted to copyright laws and violations like others do. However, if the website continues to grow in popularity and size, the need for such a page will arise.
One of my favorite videos on this site is called Twins Rock. Similar to the story of Stephanie Lenz that Lawrence Lessig mentions in Remix, this also deals with children dancing to a song, which was then in turn uploaded onto the Internet. As a twin myself, I personally enjoyed this video and watched it several times and it never once occurred to me that this could possibly be a copyright violation. I do not know if the family of these twins were sued in any way for uploading the video of them singing and dancing to Outkast’s Hey Ya, but in my opinion this is in no way a copyright violation, as I personally would not elect to download that video as way to cheat the system. The quality is simply not good enough. Nevertheless, this video has obviously received a lot of attention because it has been featured on the commercial for the game Just Dance 3.
Aside from home videos such as Twins rock, movies and famous cartoon characters are more likely to get remixed on this websites than other types of videos, images, and text. My favorite example of this is a trailer that someone created called Harry Potter and the Brokeback Goblet. In this video the user combined clips from all the Harry Potter movies to create the plot of Brokeback Mountain. This particular video has the potential to stir up a lot of controversy and generate several lawsuits. The authors, producers, companies that created the movies, etc. could sue for copyright violation if the user did not have permission to use the content in the way that he did. The same concept goes for an image of Mr. Potato head that someone created an was approved to be posted on the website of Mr. Potato head in a urinal with text that says “Oh great, I left it at home.” The owners of the copyright to Mr. Potato Head have the right to sue the user for portraying their character in this kind of way regardless of whether it was fair use or not.
This leads into Lawrence Lessig’s points on reforming copyright laws. Out of the five points that he makes, simplifying copyright laws is something that needs to be done as soon as possible. Lessig makes the point that even if one was to get permission for using someone’s work it could be near impossible to track the copyright owner down. Also, he makes the point that it should be to where kids should be able to understand it. As kids also remix and create new user generated media, copyright laws should be phrased in a way that they could be able to understand it as well. In this case, simpler is better.
The second best point he makes it that amateur creativity should be deregulated. This is important because videos such as Stephanie Lenz’s and Twins Rock should not have to worry about copyright violations as they were uploaded purely for entertainment reasons and not to create an alternate way for people to download music videos without having to pay royalties to the copyright owners. Amateur creativity should not have to have the same rules and regulations as other videos and content on the Internet because they do not have the same intentions as others.
The last change Lessig talks about that I agree needs to be changed is that file sharing should be not be considered a crime. Having people pay a small fee in order to be able to share files is his solution to this problem. I agree with him on this one. People are going to do it anyways, so they might as well make it legal. By telling people no they can’t do it, it is just going to make them want to do it more.
When it comes to the future of Iwastesomuchtime.com, I believe they will continue grow and become more popular as the years go by. As far as copyright and what they do to prevent it and their stance on it, they could create a page that will address their policy on copyright and how to avoid violations of it. If they do this, their website will continue to grow without serious consequences.
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