I am in graduate school. By definition, this makes me kind of (really) a nerd about my field of study. Possibly one of the most nerdy things I've done, and also one of the best, was joining together with a few of my awesome fellow Media Studies majors as an undergrad to found Movable Type, an undergraduate media studies journal for the University of Virginia.
The reason I bring it up today is because the journal didn't close down when the original staff graduated in May. In fact, it's still going strong, and the second edition is in the process of being released now. As an online journal, new editions of Movable Type are released a few papers at a time, to keep postings more current. Even better, all the content is archived and searchable, as well as sorted by keyword.
If you've ever been interested in exactly what media studies majors and scholars write about, Movable Type can give you more than enough insight. One of my papers on gender and video games, a topic I covered briefly in an earlier post, is up on Movable Type, as well as some of the best work I've read by my fellow undergraduates. If you're interested in hackers, crafts, Glee, Harry Potter fandom, political campaigns or more, I'd encourage you to check it out, read some material and leave your comments. It's great to get feedback on work, especially if you're planning to go anywhere with it.
Because the articles and the journal can be a little heavy at times, however, I'll also leave you with "A Media Studies Love Story", a video created by one of the original Movable Type staffers, demonstrating not only her own nerdiness and love for media studies, but a bit of insight into what it is.
In case the video looks familiar, it was inspired by the follow advertisement, "Parisian Love", released by Google for the 2010 Superbowl. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label copyright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label copyright. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Modding "Fair Use"
As I've mentioned a few times, my main area of interest is in the study of video games. My undergraduate thesis, however, was about the Internet and some of its many legal issues, so an article that came out yesterday on Wired really caught my eye when I saw that it dealt with copyright law and video games.
The article, "Citing iPhone Ruling, Xbox Defendant Says Mod Chips Are Fair Use", deals with the case of Matthew Crippen, who is scheduled to face copyright violation charges in court any day now. He could receive a sentence of three years in prison for-- get this-- modifying an Xbox. Well, a couple of them, but it's still quite a novelty.
The prosecution is arguing that Crippen's console modding violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)'s clause against hardware circumvention. Which seems pretty cut and dried (although I am not an expert on this act by any means)-- he definitely was circumventing Microsoft's attempts to keep the console limited to their approved games and software.
The whole case just got complicated, as copyright issues normally do, by Crippen's defense, which hopes to get him off on a "fair use" claim. Fair use is a special caveat in copyright law that says the way in which you are using copyrighted material does not infringe upon the copyright or require special permission. For instance, using a film clip for educational purposes in a classroom generally does not require permission from the copyright holder. Parody and news reporting are generally covered as well, as are a few other things.
To support fair use as a defense for Crippin, his lawyers have cited July's iPhone discussion (Wired article here), where copyright lawyers were all trying to determine whether or not it was legal to jailbreak an iPhone, allowing it to operate on a different network or to use unauthorized apps. Eventually, it was determined that this was allowable. To quote a court filing, "The Copyright Office cited the fact that the only way for consumers to exercise their fair-use rights by running non-Apple endorsed applications was through circumvention of access controls." If the court allows the defense to use this, Crippin might be off the hook. However, he was charging people to mod their Xbox for them, which might mean he's still in trouble-- non-commercial use is generally considered "fair", but making a profit off circumvention might be going too far.
I'm probably going to follow and see how it turns out, and I recommend you do the same if you're interested in either video games or copyright. This could be a landmark case for console freedom in particular or technological freedom in general. Giving the growing trend of proprietary technology that comes with limitations built in, this could be remarkably important. But perhaps I'll detail that trend a bit more at a later time.
The article, "Citing iPhone Ruling, Xbox Defendant Says Mod Chips Are Fair Use", deals with the case of Matthew Crippen, who is scheduled to face copyright violation charges in court any day now. He could receive a sentence of three years in prison for-- get this-- modifying an Xbox. Well, a couple of them, but it's still quite a novelty.
The prosecution is arguing that Crippen's console modding violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)'s clause against hardware circumvention. Which seems pretty cut and dried (although I am not an expert on this act by any means)-- he definitely was circumventing Microsoft's attempts to keep the console limited to their approved games and software.
The whole case just got complicated, as copyright issues normally do, by Crippen's defense, which hopes to get him off on a "fair use" claim. Fair use is a special caveat in copyright law that says the way in which you are using copyrighted material does not infringe upon the copyright or require special permission. For instance, using a film clip for educational purposes in a classroom generally does not require permission from the copyright holder. Parody and news reporting are generally covered as well, as are a few other things.
To support fair use as a defense for Crippin, his lawyers have cited July's iPhone discussion (Wired article here), where copyright lawyers were all trying to determine whether or not it was legal to jailbreak an iPhone, allowing it to operate on a different network or to use unauthorized apps. Eventually, it was determined that this was allowable. To quote a court filing, "The Copyright Office cited the fact that the only way for consumers to exercise their fair-use rights by running non-Apple endorsed applications was through circumvention of access controls." If the court allows the defense to use this, Crippin might be off the hook. However, he was charging people to mod their Xbox for them, which might mean he's still in trouble-- non-commercial use is generally considered "fair", but making a profit off circumvention might be going too far.
I'm probably going to follow and see how it turns out, and I recommend you do the same if you're interested in either video games or copyright. This could be a landmark case for console freedom in particular or technological freedom in general. Giving the growing trend of proprietary technology that comes with limitations built in, this could be remarkably important. But perhaps I'll detail that trend a bit more at a later time.
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