But I can certainly understand why companies are cracking down. How can anyone in the music industry profit from CD sales when you can listen to nearly any song for free on YouTube? As Andrea said, I think we’re headed toward stricter protection, but I also think we’ll be entering a period of innovative ways for corporations to profit from consumers getting things like TV shows, movies, photos and songs online instantly. Have you seen hulu.com? If you haven’t, you’re probably going to hate me for sharing that, but it’s amazing.

That said, I feel copyright laws are headed for stricter protection. Record labels continue to crack down on illegal file-sharing, and even everyday writers like me are tacking (c) on the bottom of unpublished work. Like Phil and Hanady said, there will also always be public domain items available. Maybe stricter laws will force more people to share their content, so that the pool of creative commons material will get larger, and we’ll end up with more best-of-the-best content (photos on par with the AP’s, for example) to work with.

I think what copyright issues apply to me now are not terribly complicated. It’s pretty clear: I can’t use a picture that I don’t have permission to use. I can’t play an entire song that I don’t have permission to, and I think that’ll be easy. Like Paul said, there are some good sources for material that’s available for all to use, but it’s not perfect.

Besides, any major news organization we might work for will have access to so many of these materials we won’t likely have to worry since they already have protocol in place for how to handle these matters. The concern is for smaller publications and individual journalists who want the same access.

I agree with Sandi’s point that linking to copyrighted material can be just as effective. Linking to other materials gives the reader a stepping off point for readers to learn more. If a reader is really interested in the topic, they will click on to see the original multimedia document.

Thinking about the future, I predict that there would be greater protection and greater freedom. Copyright laws exist so people don’t “steal” material from artists. Without greater protection to protect artists from increasingly crafty consumers, will art and music continue to be produced at the rapid rate it is? The answer is probably.

I didn’t realize that those rolls could represent actual performances. I thought a factory poked those holes in the sheet mechanically following the exact written music. I don’t know; maybe the rolls my aunt had were made that way.

But what an interesting new layer that gives the rolls - the person who wrote the music should have a right to it, but so should the person who did the performance.

I don’t think the idea of audio rental is so wacky. When you go to a concert, you can only see it live once. For this reason, I would be up for just renting player piano rolls, for example, since they represent a single performance. A song on a CD is not so different. I wouldn’t be too upset about not owning that performance for the rest of my life, especially considering that I could re-rent it when I wanted it.

I was actually just thinking about audio rental today in examing my listening habits on iTunes. I tend to buy a collection of songs and then listen to them day and night for months until I can’t stand them a minute longer. Then I comb through the options for another few weeks until I’ve gathered together a new set of songs. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I don’t need to own these songs forever. Sure, it’s nice to find an old mix you’ve made, but I’d be ok with just renting songs for a few months and then giving them up with the option of renting them again when I want. Besides, that could save me a lot of hard drive space.

As for the future, I feel like we are headed toward greater protection for copy writers. When everyone was going crazy with the Internet, music became a free-for-all. Why buy the CD when you can download the songs for free? Downloading was easy, the songs were of a decent quality and no one was really tracking your illegal activities. Many kids probably didn’t even think what they were doing was illegal. But then the recording industry stepped in. Now if you go to download songs it is very hard to get a good version, one without techno beeps and blurbs to keep us from stealing music. Even though I was a fan of music downloading in the past, now I will go to iTunes and pay the $.99 to get a guaranteed flaw-free song. The recording industry association’s lawsuits, though they seem to be few and far between, still kind of scare me. I would rather fork over the cash then ending up having to fork over thousands to some recording artist who I didn’t care enough about to buy the disc in the first place.

But even if I was immune to the web bugs, I don’t think it is in my, or anyone’s, interest to swindle starving artists of hard-earned business.
I now subscribe to a $12.99 monthly service from Rhapsody, which lets me play virtually any song from established record labels, whenever I want. For $15 a month, Rhapsody gives you the right to download any of these songs to a portable Sansa mP3 player. I have no problem paying a small fee for my “free” music, and feel better knowing that I am supporting musicians in at least a minimal way.

I think we all agree there should be some system to reward artists for their creative endeavors, and that the current state of technology threatens the continuation of such a system. Users of this technology will have to decide for themselves how they will wield it.

As a journalist, I don’t think this really affects us much. Granted, I’ve yanked a few pictures for the blog project that I probably shouldn’t have, but I’m working on that. Found a lot of great public domain resources too.

Mostly, I’ve found in cases where I would want to use a video or an audio file or an image, people are excited to let me use it. A lot of groups want press and they (I think) feel that the more content they’re providing, the more their contribution will influence the final article.

That might sound a little cynical, but a group protesting cruel practices at a slaughterhouse wants more people to see their pictures of the practices. A rising stand-up comic being profiled wants more people to see a video clip of his act.

I guess to clarify, I mean that copyright issues do affect us, but you can use anything if you get permission. And a lot of people are willing to give that permission. And if you can’t get permission to use it and it’s relevant, describe it. No law against that.

As for the second question, I’ve also got to agree with Angela about that it’s going to be an issue for a long time. But what a fun issue.

In undergrad, I did a story about the DeCSS computer code that lets people rip DVDs. I know, boring right? But there were all these incredibly cool, incredibly clever ways people were spreading the code.

The government had banned the code as a file, so this one group started selling T-shirts printed with the HTML for the code. Can’t ban a T-shirt, right? This other guy wrote out this 40-page poem describing - in haiku - how to type the code. Can’t ban a poem.

So, it’s going to be an issue for a long time and, frankly, I’m glad of it. It’s a really cool topic that, in a cynical reporter way, will continue to make some great stories for us to write.

Here’s a link to the haiku:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/decss-haiku.txt

And here’s a snippet:

We will use these few
internal variables:
t1 through t6,

unsigned integers.
k, pointer to five unsigned
bytes. i, integer.

When it comes to the future, I agree with Angela. I think people will always try to push the limits (although I think those people are the consumers, maybe bloggers, and not necessarily traditional journalists). But there will always be a very large lobby for protecting the artists’ rights, and I believe they will always be able to push through their legislation.