Week 4 EOC: Copyrights

“Copyright law originated with the United States Constitution. In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution states that "Congress shall have the power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".”
link

“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the creators of "original works" including literary works, movies, musical works, sound recordings, paintings, photographs, software, live performances, and television or sound broadcasts.” link

It is important to understand and copyright your work because it gives you, as the creator, the exclusive right to reproduce, display, and sell your work. It is easy to mistake copyrighting with patenting or trade marking but they are all different from one another. Copyrighting only protects your work, while patenting protects your ideas/discoveries, and trade marking protects words, phrases and symbols. It is important to understand the difference between the three because they will come in handy for artists like ourselves.

Copyrighting is important because without it, it gives other people the opportunity to steal and plagiarize your work. Without copyrighting, legally there is no way to prove that the work is yours and they can sell your work without being in the wrong, but if your work is copyrighted and someone steals it, you can easily take them to court and win the case.

As a photographer, I’m really starting to understand the importance of copyright laws because I put a lot of work and effort into creating my photographs and I deserve the right to my photos because after all, it is my work. Nowadays, anyone can easily steal other peoples work with face book and twitter being around but the difference between you getting screwed over and protecting your work is as simple as adding metadata to all your work. With programs like Adobe Bridge, it really is a simple process and it will save you the pain of having to deal with plagiarism. “Under the provisions of the revised copyright law, a photographer owns all rights to his pictures at the moment of creation. That means he and he alone owns the rights to sell, use, distribute copy, publish, alter or destroy his work of art. If you are a photographer, this ownership begins the moment you click the shutter. It continues throughout the life of the artist and 50 years after his or her death. In order to insure you have all the rights the law provides, as well as access to all the legal remedies available, you should have a copyright notice put on all of your published works.” link

Week 3 EOC: Erin Brockovich

In 1996, the PG&E case that Erin Brockovich was investigating ended up with a settlement of 333 million dollars towards 650 residents of Hinkley, California, who suffered from health issues due to the water pollution. In 2006, there was a new settlement for 295 million dollars for more than 1,000 residents in the Mojave Desert towns who also suffered from the groundwater contamination. Along with the settlement the company included and apology to the residents that were affected by the pollution. "Clearly, this situation should never have happened, and we are sorry that it did. It is not the way we do business, and we believe it would not happen in our company today” (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/04/local/me-erin4). The spokesman for the company, Jon Tremayne also added, "The differences between the plaintiffs and our company in the case centered on opposing views of the health science on chromium. Although the settlement does not resolve these differences, we believe it is best to move forward." (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-02-06-pge-settlement-brockovich_x.htm)

"Many of these people truly suffered and money doesn't make that go away," Brockovich said in an interview. "But I hope it gives them a sense that they stood up for something; and I hope they can use the money to help with their medical conditions or to make their lives easier." (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-02-06-pge-settlement-brockovich_x.htm).
I agree with what Erin Brockovich said in that statement because no amount of money can reverse a lot of the health issues that the residents of Hinkley had to suffer but the water contamination issue was something that needed to be resolved. The case dated way back to 1951 but it wasn't being pursued or investigated like it should have been. I assume that even if the people who lived around there and the law firms in that area had a slight idea of what was going on, they just let it slide or were too intimidated to even investigate the case because they felt like they didn't stand a chance against a multi-billion dollar company. I think what Erin Brockovich did, needed to be done in order to prevent future cases involving the health issues that came with the water contamination.

Week 2 EOC: Supreme Court Issues

The Supreme Court issue that I chose to write about is the McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission case.

On October 8th, the Supreme Court heard the case of McCutcheon and RNC (Republican National Committee) v. Federal Election Commission. The summary of the case is that Mr. McCutcheon, a wealthy business man from Alabama, wants to eliminate the term limit that a campaign contributor could make to an individual candidate, a PAC (Political Action Committee), or a political party. Of course, the republicans agree with this. “President Obama reprised his role as constitutional-scholar-in-chief, arguing that “there aren't a lot of functioning democracies around the world that work this way, where you can basically have millionaires and billionaires bankrolling whoever they want, however they want, in some cases undisclosed.”
(http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/361427/more-mccutcheon-v-fec-ammon-simon)

The Supreme Court has a complicated case that it has to decide on during the next eight months. Mr. McCutcheon argues that the term limit on political contributions violates his first amendment speech rights. He also argues that by term limit, the Supreme Court cannot protect our campaign finance laws from corruption.

My personal feeling about this matter is that no one individual person or group of people should be allowed through their massive donations to influence an elected candidate in their future political decisions. "If state aggregate limits are overturned, the door will open for that tiny fraction of donors to give more -- possibly much more," Edwin Bender, executive director of the National Institute said in a statement. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/10/mccutcheon-v-fec-state-limits_n_4078149.html)

If the Supreme Court decides to rule in favor of Mr. McCutcheon, the decision will create a situation where a wealthy business man will donate ten million dollars to a PAC, which will distribute the ten million dollars within their membership to several hundred individuals, which in return will turn that money to one candidate, thus making the transaction legal. The future candidate will be very grateful to the original donor of the ten million dollars. "The question is whether the aggregate limits unconstitutionally inhibit the free speech of donors or are a necessary check on corruption, like a restriction on giving “a Maserati to the secretary of defense,” to cite an example used by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/27/u-s-solicitor-general-donald-verrilli-did-not-do-well-does-it-matter.html)

Week 1 EOC: My Voice

Hello fellow bloggers. Welcome to my Photography blog. My name is Arda Moon and I have a passion for art in every form starting from photography, to makeup artistry, and all the way to advertising. I first picked up photography when I went on a trip to the Middle East about 4 years ago. I didn't have the best or fanciest camera, but I didn't let that stop me. I knew that I had to capture and document the beauty of everything that I saw. After that I began to see everything as if I was looking through the lens of a camera. At that point, I knew that I never wanted to put my camera down because I had the power of taking something and turning it into a beautiful art form. From then on, I continued to take pictures but I wanted to become more serious about photography, so I decided to save up some money and buy my first Digital SLR camera. My general purpose is to come up with new and exciting ideas and to make a difference in art by making big statements. My goal is to effect people enough to where my message is the last thing they think about before they go to bed. I want to make an impact big enough to shake a lot of people and have them talk about it for months to come.