Prompt 1. Copyright in the News -
A new Librarian of Congress will be appointed to replace the retired James Billington who served for the past 28 years. Billington took office before the advent of the World Wide Web and the sweeping changes of the information age. Presently the Librarian of Congress oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, but some think this should change. The Hudson Institute recently released a white paper detailing why the U.S. Copyright Office should be separated from the Library of Congress. After reading the white paper, do you think the Hudson Institute makes a good case for separation or should they remain together? The paper does a good job of arguing their case. The copyright office is large, unwieldy, and in need of an overhaul. It is a system that was patched and revised as it grew. Being structured in the way it is makes it difficult to operate. On the other hand, I think that they hurt their case about partisanship in the way it is presented. The organization the paper is written for states that they are politically conservative. The case made for congress approving a new librarian in made in response to members of the democratic party. There is no reason to believe that any appointment situation will be without political influence. Finally, I am still trying to understand how moving the office will create smaller government. The only “smaller” I can see in the argument is in optimizing the operation through digitization. To be honest, if the paper had actually stayed away from the political aspects, such as fear over a new librarian, then the case would be made stronger and make more sense to more people. References Tepp, S. and Oman, R. (2015, October). A 21st century copyright office: The conservative case for reform. Hudson Institute. Retrieved from https://www.hudson.org/research/11772-a-21st-century-copyright-office-the-conservative-case-for-reform Prompt 2. Discuss the following terms and give an example of each:
I’ll give a fun example that my wife worked with last spring. Her drama class put on the Wizard of Oz. The company that holds the rights to the play are very specific about all of the details. In fact, they are almost militantly insistent about them. Now, my wife teaches middle school and it is likely the company would not hear about it if she didn’t say anything and just infringed on their copyright. But she didn’t do that. I helped her with the programs. The attributions were VERY specific. Things like font sizes, types, and locations were specified. Everybody who did anything with the book or play got credit on the front cover. In the program, her kids wrote short bios about themselves. These are fun. If one of them had copied someone else’s instead of writing their own, that would be plagiarism. Changing up some of the details through transformation really doesn’t do much to help the problem. It was still not their own work. References Bailey, J. (2013, October 7). The difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Retrieved from https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/10/07/difference-copyright-infringement-plagiarism/
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