While the internet has been a great resource in research, communication, and even transferring files, it has also brought about much confusion, disbelief, and insecurities concerning originality and who actually owns what.
From my perspective, I see us all in a game where we are not all playing by the same rules when it comes to internet usage and copyright. In the United States, we essentially own anything that we have said when it has been said or transmitted when in plain view. As Full Sail instructor Joe Bustillos reminds us, email is similar to sending a post card--while we think we are sending it from one person to another, it in fact is being sent via plain text and can be read by anyone with the right software or know-how.
With this said, anything that I say in an email technically (from copyright perspective) belongs to me. Now, this does not seem to sit well as if these ideas are not really my own, then I would be guilty of plagiarism. My big hangup is that I don't feel conversations and such should enforced under copyright law. If I had published this email string in a book, then I may have a different point of view.
Secondly, we seem to live in a country that upholds the copyright law (mostly) but run into issues where not all countries reciprocate and our copyright protection is deemed useless. In the video Good Copy, Bad Copy, countries such as Sweden allow piracy and copyright infringers to freely share and distribute copyrighted material. Likewise, countries such as Nigeria do have copyright laws but they seem to pick and choose as to whether they will enforce it. If it hurts their economy, they many enforce it, if not, it will likely be overlooked.When we are playing on this global field where copyrighted material is easily accessible, there needs to be some consistency as to which rules will enforced.
...to be continued.
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