Defend or critique the argument presented in the reading and demonstrate how changes to copyright law could benefit or harm your creative endeavours. Provide relevant evidence. (Pappalardo, K., & Bansal, K. (2018, February 9). How copyright law is holding back Australian creators. The Conversation. The Conversation.)
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Nowadays it is a struggle to find a project that is 100% original, that gets an audience thinking “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” This is largely because new creations could be identified as an expansion of old creations. There are many examples of this as many creators take inspiration from other creators or projects, one of them would be George Lucas and Star Wars, Star Wars has a cult following that are very passionate about the films and overall canon and have their own theories about how they believe things should turn out and out of this they create their own passion projects. One of these people is a YouTuber known as Star Wars Theory, he created a fan film in agreement with Lucasfilm that said he had the right to use characters but it would not be Canon and he would have to pay for it all and would not be allowed to make any revenue from it, even after that agreement Disney stepped in and claimed the video for using some music that sounded slightly like the Imperial March which meant that they would make money off of the short film that he made.
This is in America and Canada where the laws are a lot more forgiving on copyright, so imagine what it would be like for Australian creators.
Copyright laws reduce the potential for Australian creators as they must get permission in order to use the slightest bit of another person’s product, song, creation etc. The article states that this is a negative thing as it is very expensive for new creators and could potentially put off products for large amounts of time if they don’t get permission right away which could cause creators to lose interest in their idea as they get fed up with the system. As I said before many creations are expanding on previous creations, this could be said for anything:
- Music: remixes, same beat with different lyrics – example: Bob Dylan accused of plagiarism for his music from old folk music
- Film: many films follow similar plot lines with different characters, titles but very similar ideas – example: Star Wars and Star Trek
- Books: writing fan fiction – example: 50 Shades of Grey was a Twilight fan fiction
If people were too look at every creation made it would be hard to find something that wasn’t copyrighted, because everyone has an inspiration that comes from somewhere for their creativity. Original ideas are extremely difficult to come across nowadays, Kirby Ferguson states that ‘our most celebrated creators borrow, steal and transform’ from previous ideas (Ferguson, K. 2012) and that’s why it is more about the stylistic approach or individuality a creator puts onto an existing idea that makes them creative. Examples could be how Disney is recreating cartoon movies into live action because they are running out of ideas and are interpreting old ideas in a new media.
Overall Australia’s copyright laws are diminishing the ability for people to create due to time consumption, cost, and loss of passion which is why they are in dire need of change.
REFERENCES
Ferguson, K. (2012, June) Embrace the Remix Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix
Pappalardo, K., & Bansal, K. (2018, February 9). How copyright law is holding back Australian creators. The Conversation. The Conversation.
Star Wars Theory, (2019, January 14). Disney and Warner Chappell File CLAIM on Vader fan film and are making money from it now… Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acPFPu_UZWE
The Creative World 