Copy Grounds

It’s that time of year once again. Here you will find a sampling of student media projects from our Introduction to Digital Media course. The creative range of projects this semester is greater than in past semesters. We saw everything from 2D animations, 3D modeling and animations, mash-ups and remixes, music videos, to documentaries. Our students kept themselves busy all semester and the product of their efforts reflects the creativity and fun going on in Studio 4B these days. Enjoy!

First we have Awake in the Dark by Kevin Dillon. This is a wonderful 3D animation done in the tradition of Twin Peaks.


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Paul Goldstein is the Stella W. and Ira S. Lillick Professor of Law at Stanford University. He is a renowned expert on intellectual property law and the author of numerous books on U.S. and international copyright law. This semester we read selections from Professor Goldstein’s book Copyright’s Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox. Paul was gracious enough to answer some of our students’ questions and we are happy to present his responses here.

Copygrounds: It seems that contemporary services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Prime, Gamefly, Pandora, etc. closely resemble your concept of the celestial jukebox. Would that be your assessment as well? Which do you think is the most advantageous payment structure? Advertisement-supported, pay per view, or flat rate pricing?

Paul Goldstein: Although, obviously, I had no specific service in mind when I started writing about the celestial jukebox in the 1980s, the services you identify certainly fit the general outlines that I sketched. I find it interesting that the payment structures you mention all appear to involve streaming, rather than downloading. Although streaming seems to be the currently popular business model, I wouldn’t write off downloads of the iTunes variety, at least in certain sectors. And, as to payment models, my best guess is that we will continue to seea mix of the three you identify, and possibly more. In any event, the market’s wisdom on what is the best payment method for different kinds of uses is a heck of a lot smarter than mine. continue reading…

This semester we read selections from one of my favorite books on the pitfalls of theorizing of intellectual property–James Boyle’s Shamans, Software, & Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Drawing on examples from a diverse range of topics including genetics, fiduciary trust, and artificial intelligence, Boyle demonstrates how classical liberal theory attempts to resolve the tensions between public and private spheres through an appeal to romantic notions of authorship. James Boyle is currently the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and the co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. We were delighted to have him answer a handful of student questions and his responses are featured here.

Copygrounds: Do you think contemporary technological developments and social practices have devalued the notion of individual authorship to a significant degree? That is to say, does the emergence of the Internet, “remix culture”, file-sharing, and other collaborative systems signal a departure from romantic notions of authorship? continue reading…

On October 24 Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, was in Austin to talk about how to create a more democratic media. Free Press is the largest media reform organization in the United States and promotes independent media ownership, pubic media, quality journalism, and universal access to communications. Copygrounds caught up with Craig at 5604 Manor in an event sponsored in part by Third Coast Activist. My thanks to student Kevin Dillon for video-recording this event. We are delighted to present this speech for you here.

Adrian Johns’s Piracy: The intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates goes a long way toward contextualizing contemporary legal battles over copyright in the digital age. His research provides us with a detailed and insightful history of the debates surrounding intellectual property. Adrian’s work has been invaluable to my own understanding of the relationship between technological development and intellectual property law. We were very fortunate this semester to have Adrian answer a handful of student questions after having read a selection from his book.

Copygrounds: Do you feel there is too much emphasis on economic incentive in contemporary U.S. copyright law? When it comes to the topic of how to reform copyright law a major concern among the students in this class (many of whom are aspiring filmmakers, artists, and game designers) is the potential loss of control over their work and their ability to profit from it. Does the expansive scope and duration of existing copyright protection serve the interests of our aspiring content producers?

Adrian Johns: In some ways there is clearly too much emphasis on economic incentive in the current legal structure – although one could also argue, I think convincingly, that the problem is not over-emphasis as simply a mistaken notion of where the incentive lies. The grossest example is the Sonny Bono Act, which extended the term of copyright protection and attracted the unsuccessful challenge of Eldred vs. Ashcroft. continue reading…

Last week I visited Porto, Portugal where I took part in the Future Places Festival. I taught a two day workshop on 3D modeling. The course was an introduction to Blender, a fantastic open source 3D modeling and animation application. You can download Blender for free from here. It runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. I also teach Blender to our students here at The University of Texas. Actually, we are starting Blender this week. My students in Portugal were all relative noobs but that didn’t stop them from producing some pretty cool stuff. After only 12 or so hours of instruction these students managed to produce the following animations. Pretty impressive! Click “continue reading” to see the videos: continue reading…

I have had the pleasure this week of attending the Journalism, Media and Democracy conference here in beautiful Auckland, New Zealand. Notable scholars from the political economy of communication, including Graham Murdock and Janet Wasko, have been exploring the deepening symbiosis between capitalism and communication in mass media, telecommunications, and computer mediated technologies among other areas. This has been a fantastic conference and I eagerly await the next.

Alright a new semester has arrived and we are cooking up a blistering brew of excitement here at Copygrounds. Check out our growing list of Fall 2011 Guest Contributors. It’s stacking up to be a fun semester. Let’s get things going with the latest from Pogo!

I don’t mean to be overly sentimental but I am especially proud of my students this semester. They are all awesome and I can’t wait to see how much trouble they get into in the years ahead. This post includes a sampling of the various media projects they produced during the spring semester. There were more but some technical glitches prevented me from posting everything. Hopefully I will get some more of them posted during the summer break. Below you will find video games, documentaries, mashups and remixes, short films, and 3D models and animations—all produced by students from our Introduction to Digital Media course. Enjoy!

First up is Melody Bolton’s Hipster Rex, a video game using Melody’s own hand drawn art and 2D Flash animation. Think of it as an avatar builder at the outset of some groovy MMO. Click the dino to check it out!

Next we have a beautifully done stop motion video put together by Olivia Debeck. continue reading…

Along with aspiring filmmakers our class is also home to a growing number of ambitious video game producers. We have lots of fun each semester learning the ins and outs of 3D modeling. But we also spend considerable time learning about the video game industry itself. This semester we read a portion of Greig de Peuter’s and Nick Dyer-Witheford’s Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the field of game studies. The authors’ work is grounded by the concept of immaterial labor—a reoccurring concept in our class. This book insightfully explores video games through a cultural, social, and economic lens. We are honored to have Greig de Peuter respond to some of our questions below.

Copygrounds: Is there something substantially different about the immaterial labor associated with video games as compared to radio/television? Much has been made out of the passive nature of the engagement with these latter technologies, but isn’t the process of interpretation or the creation of meaning similar for both? Or more broadly, do you see continuity or a significant break in the transition from so-called ‘industrial labor’ to ‘post-industrial labor’?

Greig de Peuter: A short answer is that there are continuities and discontinuities. As students in the course know, there’s a tradition of reception studies that’s challenged simplistic assumptions of audience passivity and emphasized the active agency of mass media audiences in the meaning-making process. Even so, it wasn’t unusual for early game-studies scholars to herald the interactivity of computer and video games as a democratizing advance over the viewer or listener’s position within one-to-many broadcast media—an exercise in contrast that obscures continuities like corporate ownership structures and marketing-led content design and so on. Looking back, early celebratory perspectives on interactive entertainment might be read as rehearsing some of the ideas later associated with the rhetoric of user empowerment now surrounding Web 2.0. continue reading…