I find it really fascinating that there are 2 sides to the argument of copyright. One side saying that copyright laws are necessary to protect peoples creative works and the other side saying that life is about borrowing and sharing and that there shouldn’t be copyright laws because “everything is a remix” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc) So what is the answer? Well that depends on who you are and what you are in need of at the moment.
Sometimes it is convenient to have laws that protect your work and ensure that only you will make money from your creations. However, other times it is quite inconvenient to have laws that make it so you can’t be fully creative because you are restricted to things that haven’t been done before. This is quite a conundrum that happens. Especially when you are going back and forth between copyright laws being convenient and in the way. So copyright laws do go both ways. They can be helpful or hindersome to the creator.
I believe there is another way they can be helpful to the creator which is not by protecting their creations. I have seen copyright work in someone’s benefit in another way
There are other ways that copyright laws can actually be convenient. I have an example of a situation that I saw on my mission. I served in Austin, Texas and one day we were helping a man with his yard work. As my companion and I were working on the lawn this man was making hats in his backyard and he began to tell us about his hat business. He told us how he started it and was working from his backyard making hats and then he decided to make a hat using a phrase that the head coach of the Austin based football team the Texas Longhorns said which was
“All Gas, No Brakes”. This phrase was not necessarily copyrighted and he didn’t use any Longhorns logos he just made an orange design with it that would fit right in with the other team merch. Well this hat and design actually got pretty popular among Longhorns fans and pretty soon the school was reaching out to this man saying that if he didn’t pay to be officially licensed by the program they were going to sue him. So he ended up paying the money to be officially licensed. And although that was no small amount of money it did allow him to actually use their logo and got him more attention and a reputation.
I think this is a really neat real-life example of copyright and how it actually can be good not only for the one it protects but also for the one borrowing.
3 Comments
Ellie · October 25, 2022 at 4:59 pm
That was a great example you shared from your mission! It’s neat that the situation turned out to be beneficial for both the school and the man making hats. I guess it goes to show that sometimes it’s worth paying the copyright fees for the payoff at the end.
Brian Croxall · October 25, 2022 at 7:01 pm
This is an interesting story, Kaden, and it goes to show that universities are not immune from this sort of behavior. It also raises the question of whether the coach’s speech was a copyrighted or trademarkable instance.
Serena Juhasz · October 25, 2022 at 7:20 pm
I liked the story that you shared. I think it really shows the two perspectives of copywriting, that it can be good and beneficial. There are moments when it might be annoying, but overall there can be pros for copywriting.