Intellectual Property

At the beginning of the semester, I blogged about some of the intellectual property concerns that I had when using social media. I do know that many platforms (including the most popular like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) retain the right in their user agreement to use anything you post royalty-free. This has been a major factor in my hesitation to share photos, videos, and other creative work on those platforms. Not that I fancy myself an artist or photographer, but I am uncomfortable with the idea that those things can be used any time, anywhere and without my knowledge. For this reason, I found the tips for content creators on social media provided by Ahmed (2018) to be particularly helpful. His suggestions to add digital watermarks, or to only share low resolution images, were good ones. I know that low res might not be desirable for avid Instagramers, but for someone who wants to have more control over their content and how it is used, it is a great idea.

I also read the linked article on Article 13 of the European Copyright Directive published by UDL, a British intellectual property firm. Article 13 would require online platforms that allow users to upload and share materials to "filter" those uploads based on whether or not the creator/copyright holder has given permission for the use of that content. This really got me thinking about just how much content is shared over and over, and most of the people who share it have no idea where it came from. This is especially so for memes and other materials that get passed around on the internet freely. I am not even sure that most meme creators would know how to go through the right channels to make their meme protected or open to the public (whichever they prefer), and it seems like it would be difficult to expect every internet user to understand the complexities of those processes. I am interested to see how this plays out in the future.