For this week’s blog assignment (due Sunday, 9/9 at 6pm), you will:
- Watch the South Park episode “HumancentiPad” and consider how it frames the relationship between media industries and consumers, and “innovation.”
- Read the Terms and Conditions/Terms of Service/Terms of Use for any website or service that you use regularly (e.g. iTunes, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Hulu, or any other site), paying particular attention to any section on copyright or intellectual property.
- Citing relevant materials from both “HumancentiPad” and the Terms of Use you’ve selected, write a blog post in which you address William Patry’s chapter “How the Copyright Wars are Being Fought and Why.” This blog post should synthesize Patry’s central argument and apply it to the aforementioned texts.
- Use the MLA section in A Writer’s Reference (p. 370-440) as your guide when citing your sources. When quoting from Patry or digital sources, be sure to include both an in-text citation when appropriate, and a list of works cited. In particular, see the resources on single author sources when citing Patry (p. 390, 399), and organization as author (p. 392, 400) and citing online sources (p. 412-413) when citing Terms of Use on websites.
The South Park episode “HumancentiPad” satirizes Apple’s relationship with its customers.
Leave any questions about this assignment in the comments below.
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Anonymous
I’m having a hard time organizing my thoughts and making them concise for the assignment. Are we supposed to be arguing a point (either in agreement or disagreement with Patry) or should we be more focused on the relationship between copyright industries, consumers, and innovation?
suzannescott
Good question- like most of the short written assignments in this course, you’ll need to make some decisions about scope, and I’ve left this intentionally broad so that you might hone in on one or two issues/points that you think are most striking to address across these three texts. What you focus on will be determined, at least in part, by the terms of use you select, so that might be a good starting point: both Patry and the South Park episode make relatively clear arguments about the relationship between industries and consumers, but what does your selected terms of use suggest about how these dyamics are/aren’t changing? The suggestion to focus on innovation, and the relationship between producers and consumers, was more of a direction to focus your reading/analysis of the South Park episode (e.g. it might be a pitch perfect Human Centipede parody, but we’re not interested in that).
There are a few potential strategies here (among many) once you have read/watched the three texts in play:
– Pick a point from Patry’s chapter that you feel is reinforced or complicated by the South Park episode and the terms of use you’ve selected.
– Pull one of the structuring tensions from Patry’s chapter, and think about how they play out in the South Park episode and the Terms of Use you selected
Generally, the idea is to apply some element(s) of Patry’s argument to one media representation of the “war” between industries and users, and to see how closely the terms of service we agree to every day either echo, or problematize, the vision of the Copyright Wars set out by Patry.
copywriter170
Not to sound like “that annoying student who over-achieves,” but, is it acceptable for the blog post to exceed 500 words? Also, what do you suggest for wrapping up the post? Perhaps some connection to our life as a consumer? Thanks!
suzannescott
You’re always welcome on the blog posts to exceed the specified word limit (the primary function of the 500 word limit is to reinforce the idea that these are shorter written responses that you should be devoting less time to than the formal paper for this course). Wrap up the post however you like- certainly, you could personalize this to your own consumer habits/identity.
rroses93
Is anyone having trouble finding their dashboard? Mine isn’t showing up and I can’t post my paper…
suzannescott
going to oxycopyrightandculture.wordpress.com/wp-admin and signing in should take you directly to the dashboard
rroses93
I tried the link but it said I do not have the necessary privileges to access the dashboard for “Copyright + Culture”