Eyes Wide Shut

No, not Tom and Nicole’s last film together! (do I need to explain? ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was a movie that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman starred in, but I’m using the name as a metaphor to describe my views on Copyright infringement).

I’ll admit now, this post isn’t going to based around any type of educational aspects, but don’t let that deter you from reading it.

Until last week/today when I finally completed the week 3 learning plan for this subject, I had no idea that I was indeed breaking the law by posting a picture of the New York skyline on my blog, or by posting a YouTube clip that had something to do with education. I did however know that I probably wasn’t right when I provided the link for a YouTube clip about “Parks and Recreation”. Side note: if you haven’t seen Parks and Recreation and have a spare 42 hours to watch all 124 episodes, you should! Your life will change.

But this is meant to be a serious blog post about a serious issue. Thus far, when it comes to Copyright, my eyes are wide shut (hence the title). I know there are files (movie, tv, music) that I’ve downloaded, shared or been given that I have no right to have. The thing is, what do we do about it now? Once we’ve clicked “watch” or “download”, we are committing a crime. What I didn’t know was the extensive fines (somewhere in the 10s of thousands) and even jail time can result in download content that isn’t yours to download! I actually had a teacher who we used to trade movies, tv shows and music with whenever something new came out that we, or she wanted.

First things first, admit it! We all do it! We’ve all watched that movie or tv show illegally, we’ve downloaded music that we didn’t pay for, we take pictures for our blogs and call them our own, the examples are endless. But does knowing about how bad it is deter us?

This brings me to one of the greatest examples facing several countries, particularly Australia at the moment! With the imminent release of Season 5 of Game of Thrones at the beginning of April, which goes in conjunction with an article I read last year about Australian copyright infringers, Australia was named the worst place in the world for illegal downloading. If you’ve got time, definitely read the article because the stats are pretty interesting: http://www.news.com.au/technology/australians-named-worst-offenders-for-illegally-download-game-of-thrones/story-e6frfro0-1226362158184

Also, if you wanna check out another blog where someone has written extensively about the whole ‘CopyRight’ topic, go and check out Britt’s post about actual copyright information, not just what I think! https://u1046237.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/breaking-the-law-gasp/

Thanks for stopping by!