Pictures that Lie

On the website Pictures that Lie there are a multitude of different photoshopped photos that misrepresent what actually took place in the photograph. I chose to analyze the picture on the cover of the University of Wisconsin Undergraduate Application taken by Haney Farid, because it shows how far some people are willing to go to achieve what they want. The picture is at a football game with several students cheering, the main photo is from a 1993 football game but on the left is a black student from a 1994 photo. It was manipulated by basically copying and pasting the image of the black student into the picture. The school did this because they wanted a picture that reflected diversity; unfortunately they had to doctor the photo to do so. I do not believe the manipulation was very harmful, the black student was a real Wisconsin student and I think it’s a good thing that Wisconsin wants to show they are diverse; of course a better way would have been to have taken a legitimate photo.

CLT Visit

Before class on thursday I had no idea what the CLT had to offer. RobertChapman guided us through this very interesting area in the library and I learned a lot of new things. There was a lab with computers to do photo editing and video editing, a room with mac desktops, and a few other utilities. The photo and video editing area were two places that would be very useful for CS 1300 and my other classes. If I needed photos for a powerpoint or needed to do a video presentation the software available at CLT would be very helpful. What interested me most, however, was the sound editing room. It held a high quality condenser microphone, a keyboard, and its computer has Pro Tools, the best sound recording and editing software available. I will definitely be visiting this room for my personal projects because I am growing tired of my inferior recording software.

Jason Hardin came to class to talk to us about copyright laws. Copyright violations are federal crimes, plagiarisms are ethical violations. Copyright-legal recognition on part of the government ensures creators of their work that they can control the production of their work and profit from it. Copyright originated in 1790, and is in the constitution and predates the bill of rights.
We learned that copyright is imortant becasue it promotes individuality, and intellectual development, innovation, creativity, industrial progression etc.
A copyright is good for the authors life plus 70 years, it was originally 14 years.
The law used to be 50 years after death, but Disney got their representative to take it to the house and change it. It’s a felony to commit a copyright infringement involving more than 10 copies and a value of more than 2500 dollars. HEOA-must make an annual disclosure to students about copyright and campus policies, must develop a plan to combat unauthorized file sharing to include the use of technology-based-deterrents, and must implement a system to provide alternatives to illegal downloading. It was interesting to know that you don’t have to submit copyright forms to have copyright. This was interesting to me because I did some copyrighting of my own over the summer when I recorded an album. Creative Commons is an interesting website that provides different forms of copyrights.

Fair Use:
Not all educational use is fair use, and it is less defensible to recreate commercial works. Intended purpose of reproduction is a factor when looking at fair use cases. One factor the court looks at is the effect of reproduction on revenue stream.


Copyight Laws by Taylor Stratton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.