5.+My+Report

= **The Question:** =


 * The use of digital data covered by Copyright in a multimedia production reflects a lack of creativity and is against the law in all circumstances. Discuss

Nowadays the Internet is extensively used and a lot of people have contributed their works and ideas by making them available on the big Web, called the Internet. All these contributions though, created by their original creator, were openly available for anyone to use. So what protected these creative authors and their work? A simple but complicated enforcement called, Copyright.

In Australia the Copyright Act was introduced in 1968, and that automatically gave rights to the original creators of their work. This enables them protection rights over reproduction, moral rights (except broadcasts and published editions) as well as performers' rights (Sydney, 2009).

In order to make a judgement of whether digital data Covered by multimedia reflects a lack of creativity, lets define the key terms. The University of Sydney (2009) on its website states that copyright is "a legal right given to the authors or creators of works". Furthermore Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, facts, names, title or slogans. It simply protects the expression of an idea, or the form it is in. These legal rights do not change when someone buys a book or an artwork because the author of those works still have the copyrights, unless special arrangements have been made and the copyright ownership is transferred.

There are certain criteria that have to be taken into consideration in order to obtain these legal rights. As long as it is either a literary work (that includes software), music composition, dramatic work, film, sound recording or published edition and it is recorded on paper or as a recording or another physical form, it is original and the person who created it is an Australian citizen then Copyright protects the work right away. These legal rights will exist unless in a case of signing a legal document that clearly states that the Copyright rights will not be the original creator's. This is commonly known as a contract **(Baxter, 2007).

Now if you look at the digital data that is covered by Copyright in a multimedia production, it will be obvious that it will consist of a number of different data types such as text**, images, video, animation, hypertext and audio **. This is important as some types of work like a film, a sound recording, a broadcast and performances may have a little exception from the general law, meaning that if they consist of multiple idea expressions that are all combined to form one then it is not just the overall piece of work that is covered by copyright but the separate components that make it a whole ** (Sydney, 2009), thus why play, film and televisions scripts are subject to copyright **.

Another area worthy of mentioning is software copyright. As computers continue to advanced, new software is published daily. Software are literary works and the authors need to be protected because they have designed the program and have written the coding which makes it a form of work. It is very much the same as copying a person's idea word for word. Thomas G. Field (2009), further explains that " a programmer has protection from others' duplicating a segment of code but not from their writing different code to accomplish the same end".

Obtaining a software illegally is referred to as software piracy and it is a big issue in Australia, accounting for 26 per cent of the software installed as pirated which can lead to jail sentences and big fines. Although it has dropped by 2 percent in the past two years it still costs the Software Companies all over the world a total of $US53 billion (Australia bucks global software piracy trend, 2009). In my opinion, there is no difference whether you have designed a new software or wrote a new book on how to manage your time. You have still created something original and it should be protected. The fact that software piracy is so high amongst the world is very disappointing because it is a source of income for people who are solemnly involved in the creation of new software.

Beautiful people around the world have now provided us with information on pretty much everything, and the question now stands: Is the use of digital data covered by Copyright in a multimedia production a reflection of a lack of creativity?

I believe there are many advantage and many disadvantages with ideas and concepts circulating but just not duplicating. For one, it has enable the world to broaden the original idea and not providing the original creators who thought of the idea with a monopoly. It is fair to say that the expression is copyrighted but not the idea, but often the line between legality and infringement of copyright is so fine that many people step over it everyday, some without even knowing.

A @Greek newspaper was recently published and 90% of the articles -if not more- are being written by a single man. My first thoughts were that this man was not a reported so he obviously could not go to report every single incident that he has written about in his newspaper, so was what he was doing an infringement of copyright of all the articles that he looked up on the Internet and paraphrased? Apparently not, because he only borrowed the idea, not the expression of the idea. This I believe is a lack of creativity and it somehow does not seem right even though the man writing these articles is clean of infringement.

In other ways though the idea of copying someone's exact form of work can be a severe case. The song "Downunder" by //Men at Work// was early this year accused of copyright infringement by the Larrikin Music's song "Kookaburra" and now Larrikin Music is claiming 40-60% of the income received from the song  (Ryan, 2010). It was a total of two bars of music that were very alike. I see this as a pure lack of creativity for not creating a new flute riff, but nonetheless it does not look like //Men at Work// were aiming for an infringement anyway.

The advantages for using digital data are many even though the work is protected by Copyright. One of the best ways of learning and understanding is in a collaborative way of learning and showing the different angles of looking at ideas depending on how the creators perceived the ideas at the time of creating. If it is not intended for learning then it can be used to illustrate a point.

For example I do not think that if I use a PowerPoint presentation to explain Copyright using images, audio, text, animation and video created by others and edited by me is a lack of creativity because bonding everything together is something of a talent itself. On the other hand it can be seen as a lack of creativity because I did not create any of the digital data. An interesting enforcement is the Creative Commons license which is a license that allows you to freely copy and edit and reproduce the original piece of work. I believe that is the best way to make something bigger and greater and something very creative in a kind and sharing manner with the rest of the big Web users.

So even though it is against the law in all circumstances, it is possible to adapt to those barriers and make a very original work that will not infringe copyright and it will be protected itself at the moment of creation. In conclusion this also encourages people to come up with new ideas and that is what our world needs.