HOMEWORK FOR PROFESSOR RYAN

Case Study: Vidding -- Free Expression or Copyright Piracy?

Read Case Study Vidding -- Free Expression or Copyright Piracy? at the end of Chapter 13 in your text. In one to two pages, supported by evidence from your text and from other research, respond to the following questions:

• Using the ethical criteria introduced in Chapter 4 (utilitarianism, rights, and justice), is the creating and uploading of vids to the Internet simply an ethical expression of one’s free speech, or is it an infringement of intellectual property?
• Where do you draw the line when using material found on the Internet, but trying to respect the artists’ intellectual property and rights to royalties from their creations? How different should a vid be from the original source to justify that it is no longer the same material as the original artist created and thus not covered under the copyright laws?