Copyrights: Doing the Right Thing

Someone might say: Why bother to take the time to give another person credit for something you find and use online when you are never going to see or meet that person? So what if it’s “wrong?” Who is ever going to find out?  And besides, everyone else is doing it.

Well, actually, copyrights do more than just allow the creator of an innovation to profit from all of their hard work and their personal investment of time and resources. And it’s more than just “doing the right thing” and crediting someone else for their creation that you want to use online instead of just passing it off as your own. Copyrights promote the progress of science and technology.

As Americans living in the 21st century, we take safety and security for granted. Not only are we the world’s sole superpower, but the United Nations severely frowns on anyone invading and trying to add territory from another sovereign nation. This was not the case for the vast majority of world history. 

Failing to keep up with technology, primarily military technology, put a nation at risk of being invaded or of disappearing entirely. Inca Empire vs. Spanish guns, anyone? This fact of history was not lost on the Founding Fathers. As members of a fledgling nation in a sea of hungry European imperialists, they needed any advantage that they could get. Homegrown innovation would be the answer to the nation’s future.

My video remix uses footage from a 1948 cartoon originally released to counter the threat of communism to the freedoms that Americans took for granted. My use is different. For example, I eliminated the sound to add my own soundtrack and rearranged the order of the scenes. This video was part of the Prelinger Archives and is offered with a Creative Commons license that makes such use allowable (with attribution) for anyone. 

There is also the Fair Use doctrine of the U.S. copyright law which allows for limited use and remixing of copyrighted materials so long as it is for educational, critical, or news reporting purposes. Remixing is using the work of others for new purposes. 

Since my work was for an educational purpose and my use was different from the original use, this use might be judged as fair use even if the video was copyrighted. However,  I did use nearly a quarter of the video footage which might be too much given the general “ten-percent” rule. 

I used Microsoft’s HD Movie Maker Pro for the video editing and after many failed attempts and missteps I found the software easy to use and functional. I used Audacity for the audio editing although I didn’t do much of that.

-- Updated 13 November 2021