Keeping things interesting

I searched “fair use” and “copyrights violations” on youtube. What I found in my search results varied from old men carefully laying out the laws of fair use while dressed in a super villain costume (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8haQWuenxhY) to a video of an angry teenage boy ranting about how youtube deleted his video of him dancing to “candy shop” by Fifty Cent (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtmUiCgGO7I ). I then just browsed around youtube and marveled at how many videos are clearly infringing on copyright laws. Most of the people who put videos up on youtube probably don’t even know what a copyright law is and most of the video’s uploaded by such people, and which do violate various copyright laws, will most likely never be taken down. I get the point of fair use, and think it’s legitimate and important – but there is no way that it will ever be strictly enforced on such websites as youtube – youtube wouldn’t be as popular and fun to waste time watching if all the video’s obliged by the pamphlet of the “code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video” that was handed out to our class on Friday. Isn’t that just how our world works, too? If everyone obliged by the rules, life just would not be as interesting, nor would politics. For example, while I had an absolute adverse reaction to Sarah Palin’s vice presidential speech, the debate would not have been as hilarious or interesting if she had been a true politician and had not given shout outs to the third graders or winked cleverly at the camera. I honestly did not have any real urge to reflect upon anything tonight, so if this reflection seems incredibly scattered and confusing, that’s because I am incredibly scattered and confused. I wonder if anyone from our class will end up infringing upon copyright laws in the process of filming their videos. I wonder if anyone will even notice. If they do notice, at least it will make things more interesting!