Transformed Photos: More Than Meets The Eye

I chose to evaluate the above photo of Clement Hurd, the illustrator of the beloved children's book Goodnight Moon. When the book was originally published in 1947, Hurd had a cigarette in his raised right hand, the photo was edited when the publishing company, HarperCollins, republished the book in 2005. Their reasoning for such alteration was for the harmful influence it could have on young children to see an adult in the children's book industry smoking, essentially to promote lung health. Though HarperCollins may have doctored the photo in more ways than one,

I don't see it as harmful or helpful, mostly because children don't generally look to the personal habits of children's book illustrators of the past for life lessons. Oh, and it makes him look like he's trying to impersonate Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

CSCI:CLT (and other acronyms)

Previously on CSCI,

The class was given a tour of the AT&T Center for Learning Technology, guided by Robert Chapman. Nothing too dramatic, definitely interesting.

The CLT is home to many computers, of both the PC and Mac varieties, allowing users of opposite technology styles to become apt in Apple and proficient at PC. However, it is the software available to the student body that was previously unbeknownst to me that was most shocking...they have everything. If ever I need to edit a photo, video, or music, or pretty much anything my little heart desires, the CLT is the place to be. Before our formal introduction, I had taken quick glances in awe and wonder on my way to hole up for exam study sessions on the first floor, but never before did I know its capabilities! I plan on becoming a regular in the CLT, my Mac skills are lacking and I have a yearnin' for some learnin'...too much?

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Copyright

People don't like to be copied, we seem to have an imagined grandeur in our head that everything we create is entirely original and because of that, we are unique. Yet, our uniqueness truly isn't all that original, we tend to...borrow. For instance, my previous blog entries are examples of my self-proclaimed originality, but their very existence prevents them from being unique. There are an endless supply of bloggers on the internet who display the same type of sass, and inevitably someone also used Webster's format to define themselves. This isn't to sound pessimistic, as we are all entirely different combinations of a lot of different experiences but also a lot of shared sources. Though for the most part unintentional, we can't help but copycat. Enter legal system.

Copyright was first created to enforce individual rights, the idea being that larger quantities of ideas would disseminate because persons felt secure knowing that their intellectual property would be just that, theirs. Cultural development ensued and the world was better for it...in 1790. Nowadays, it has become supremely difficult to create much of anything as there is a vast amount of copyright red tape inhibiting growth and change, a lot of which covers really common ideas. Musicians often are confronted by this, as there are only so many chord progressions within the musical realm, and so many protected by law from use without payment first. Though the Fair Use Provision act has allowed many to overcome this difficulty, many still struggle in achieving self expression, persecuted by a lower case letter C. I think that through the creation of new regulations such as Creative Commons, we can once again become a developmental society, not worrying about impinging or infringing but just creating.

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Copyright by Moira Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.