Participation 5: Copyrights and Content Online

Copyright laws affect my experience of accessing content online very sparingly. YouTube is such a goldmine for copyright violations that it is surprising, especially after reading Lawrence Lessig's "Property" chapter from Free Culture, to me that the site is still up and running. It probably has to do with the fact that there are just so many videos posted or are being posted on YouTube, it is too difficult to keep track of all its content and whether they violate copyright law. Being a Communication Arts major in Film, TV and Radio studies, I watch many films for class. Many of my classes ask me to watch specific films outside of lectures and screenings and writes papers about them. In order to save money on purchasing or renting the film, most of the time I can find the specific scene or even the whole movie I am looking for. Clearly there are tons of copyright violations on just that one YouTube post alone. YouTube also has the benefit of breaking up the films into scenes and it makes it much easier to rewatch than if I were using a DVD. But there have occasions where the clip or video I was looking for was posted but the sound was removed or the clip was deleted all together. There have even been occasions where the video was only available in the United Kingdom region and not in the US. This happens often on bbc.com. Another area where I have experienced copyrights restricting my ability to access content is through doing research online for a paper. I have run into articles that would be so helpful for my to site, yet I can only view the first couple of pages. Luckily within MyUW's library resources, it give me access to numerous scholarly articles that would not be available to me if I were not a student. Overall sites such as YouTube, Grooveshark, Spotify, Tumblr and many others allow me to view films, share photos, and listen to music that I have not paid for or have originally owned. Most likely though I don't go online to try to view or listen to content that violates copyright law. I pay for Hulu Plus and if the film I need to see is on there I will watch it there instead of going through the trouble to find it on YouTube.