Vidding and Copyright Infringement
Many people have become semi famous from others vidding content that they uploaded or appeared in. A few semi famous people, extra ordinary personalities, that come to mind are the Double Rainbow Guy, aka Yosemitebear, Sweet Brown, and Antoine. Without “vidding” these people would not have had any fame or acknowledgement whatsoever. There is a fine line between copyright infringement and vidding. One factor that I think plays an important role in differentiating the two is if a video is modified from its original version and an artistic twist is added.
Art is intellectual property, and by adding your own property to it, makes it your own. The Double Rainbow video is a great example. This video was up on the YouTube sight for quite some time before being discovered by talk show host Jimmy Kimmel who posted a tweet with the YouTube link on his Twitter account. From there the video spread like wildfire and people were interviewing the maker of the, Paul Vasquez a Yosemite Park resident. Three days later, a well-known auto tuner made a remix video with a song out of the double rainbow video.
The song was made available on ITunes and the profits are split 50/50 with Paul Vasquez, who made the original video and the remix auto tuner, known by user name schmoyoho. When the person vidding the original pays royalties or splits profits, then I think this is not copyright infringement because they are paying their dues. If a person profits from using the original version in their new formatted version, then they should have to pay the original owner a portion, it is only fair. I think this is the fine line between self-expression, freedom of speech, and copyright infringement.
If you are looking to profit from the content without consent than that is unethical. However, if you are adding your own perception of a television show or video just to express your point of view then this falls under freedom of speech. With social media more popular than ever, there are millions of people copying and sharing original tweets of Facebook posts. We are absolutely unable to monitor every person’s tweets and posts. With such a broad spectrum of what falls under copyright infringement and what falls under self-expression, we as adults have to be able to use judgment based on ethical reasoning.
Lawrence Kohlberg categorized different stages of moral development. People have to use their morals and ethical reasoning to draw a line under the copyright laws. You know when you are stealing someone else’s ideas. The bottom line is that credit should be given where credit is due.
References
- http://knowyourmeme. com/memes/double-rainbow
- Lawrence, A. T. & Weber, J. (2011). Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy (13th ed. ). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. ISBN: 978-0-07-813715-0
