6
THE ADVANCE
Commentary
| YOUR SOUTHWEST COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
|
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2016
Ushering in a new phase of copyright BY B E T H JA R R E L L
beth@gulllakeadvance.com
T
he Internet is up in arms again. Well, to be fair, the Internet is usually up in arms over something or other, but this time it’s serious, darn it! At least until the next shiny thing comes along, of course. Unless you live under a rock or don’t have an Internet connection, you know what YouTube is by nowregular, every day people posting blogging videos, called vlogs, to the internet in order to gain a following. There are even career YouTubers; people who can make millions of dollars a year talking about something people care about, or doing something people like doing, like playing video games. When I told my mother last week that yes, there are people who make millions of dollars based on people watching them play video games, she just shook her head, sighed wearily and said “I’ve lived too long.” I share that sentiment sometimes, ma. One channel in particular, the Fine Bros, is under fire this week. In their videos, the Fine Brothers find people to react to watching other things, like “kids react to seeing the Captain America trailer” for instance. The entire premise of their channel is for people like you and me to log in to their computers and watch people reacting to things they’re watching. I know. But they have 14 million subscribers- or they did- so they must be doing something right. Last week, however, the channel made a video announcing their intent to copyright the phrase “react”, meaning that they and they alone can make “react” videos on YouTube. People reacted very negatively to this concept. The idea of trying to copyright an entire concept seems ludicrous, yet it’s been done before. Taylor Swift has made numerous attempts (some successful) to copyrighted lyrics from her hit song Shake It Off. What’s different about this is by copywriting the word is it would make it illegal for fans to duplicate its use, which creates some interesting dilemmas in the world of transformative works. Transformative works, or fan works, are things like art, music and novels made by fans of a particular movie, television show or
video game using the original characters of the work. What the Fine Brothers have done, in essence, by copywriting the trademark to ‘react’-related things, is halting the creating of transformative works based on their product. Now, things like fan fiction, the leading example of transformative work, have always been on the legal grey side. Are they technically legal? No, because it’s using characters that already have a copyright on them. Are the big movie and television conglomerates ever going to stop them from being created? Absolutely not. In their eyes, it’s a little bit of “don’t see don’t tell.” The more fan-made works created, the more their original product is being discussed, watched and most importantly sold. Some have even made entire careers out of transformative works. E.L James’ bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey started off as a Twilight fan fiction, let’s not forget. As have countless others. When the Fine Brothers put the copyright and actively start taking down other ‘react’ videos, I fear it may start a reaction to others rushing to copyright their ideas under the most broad scopes possible. I’m in the minority camp that believes transformative works are extremely important. In addition to being a creative outlet for both teens and adults, often times we see in media an underrepresentation of certain minorities, and transformative works fix that. Whether it comes in written, video, art or any other form, creative works are important. Can you imagine a world where everything was so heavily copyrighted that everything we wrote or said in broadcast had to be triple-checked before use? As a writer, this type of discourse scares me. As of February 2, the Fine Bros announced their decision to rescind their copyright claim on “react”, a step in the right direction. With the backlash they received and the staggering amount of followers they lost, it shows that the Internet is ready to fight back a little for their rights to be creative. It’s a step in the right direction, but let’s just hope it doesn’t start a domino effect elsewhere.
FROM THE TOP OF THE PILE
Two steps forward, one step back BY B R I A N Z I N C H U K
brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net
F
or a society that seems to be moving forward on so many technological fronts, we are also quietly slipping backward as well, especially when it comes to aerospace. On Feb. 2 CNN ran a story about how Boeing is cutting production of the venerable 747 Jumbo Jet by half, to six airframes a year. It will likely cease production soon. The Airbus A380 was not long ago hailed as the successor to the 747, with more seating capacity and a full second deck of passenger seating. Now it, too, is struggling for orders and could possibly cease production if more airlines don’t step up. This is after production of the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy ended long ago, and the C-17 Globemaster III ended a few years ago. Canada picked up one of the very last C-17s to be produced before the line was shut down for good. The net effect of all this is that, should both the 747 and A380 end production, the Western World will have lost the capability of building massive four-engine aircraft. Given the state of Ukraine, I don’t have a lot of confidence in Antonov’s capability of filling that hole, even with their massive An-124 which is still in production, if barely. Supersonic travel was supposed to take over the world with the Concorde. But it has long since retired, and despite occasional
references in fanciful online articles, the likelihood of crossing the Atlantic at Mach 2 any time soon is remote, indeed. (There is a group that wants to return one airframe to limited service. Good luck with that.) Large aircraft aren’t the only major area of aerospace capability slippage. We have not had a man walk on the moon in my entire lifetime, and I was born in 1975. We may not see man on the moon again in the rest of my lifetime, either, given the way things are going. We almost certainly won’t see man set foot on Mars, either, before I shuffle off this mortal coil. We used to have this wonderful thing called the space shuttle. Sure, it was essentially a truck hauling things back and, occasionally, forth to low earth orbit, but it was an important capability to have. Its later flights focused primarily on building the International Space Station, something we could probably never rebuild today with our current capabilities since the shuttle has been retired. Thus, when it’s time to retire the International Space Station, we don’t, and likely won’t, have the ability to replace it. There’s nothing in the pipeline right now with the capability of the shuttle. Those capabilities are gone, and not coming back, likely for decades. There’s a line by Matthew McConaughey in the movie Interstellar that really rings true in this regard. His character, Cooper, is a former astronaut turned corn farmer. Cooper said, “We used
to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.” Why is this the case with aerospace? We don’t see it in shipbuilding, by and large. They are continually building larger and larger cruise and container ships. We did top out with the Seawise Giant when it comes to oil tankers, however, in 1979. I guess when the largest ship in the world draws too much water to traverse the English Channel, and won’t fit through either the Suez or Panama Canals, that might be the practical limit. Land vehicles see continual improvements in horsepower, torque and payload. A half-ton today has more horsepower as a one-ton thirty years ago, but gets much better fuel economy. Look at the monster tri-drive semis we see today. What has caused aerospace to plateau and start backsliding? Is it the overburden of ever-increasing safety standards that have choked off growth in aerospace capability? Insurance choking out new product, like it did with much of general aviation for decades? Is it the lack of vision? Or simply the case of the tremendous inflation curve of aerospace development costs has risen out of the stratosphere? It’s time to look to the stars again, not the dirt.. Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.