Source: http://jtittleinnovations.com/blog/technology-serve-the-innovations/intellectual-property-is-an-important-legal-and-cultural-hipe/

On a week about copyright, it was funny to talk about land. Land is alienable. Why? Because land is property. It has ownership. It always made sense to me in the way that land does belong to the people, but it can’t always belong to everyone. After all, that’s what the public land, like national parks, is for.

When we talked about  intellectual property and corporations. Oh the land topic finally made sense. The idea of copyright being property: specifically intellectual property. How to protect your own property? Physically and with a contract. How do protect intellectual property that can be possible, easily accessed by the general public?  Patents.

A patent, “Prevent others from using it. You get completely ownership. You can to prove it is original and new and practical to get a patent.” How can a company hold ownership. If a company an owner? I felt silly when we discussed this in class, because I didn’t realize the full extent to which a company was considered a person. I can’t believe how naive I was, or possibly am.

When our discussion went into copyrights, that I had known a lot about, outside of the reading. I really enjoyed the wensite linked: https://unhappybirthday.com/.  It was an extremely simple website that went over what copyright and copyright infringement is.

I loved the discussion on how the copyright came to be, and the timeline of changes

• First copyright was termed  for 14 years, renewable if the author is alive
  • 1831, term changed to 28 years with 14 year renewal
  • 1909 term changed to 28 years with 28 year renewal
  • 1976 lifetime plus 50 years
  • 1998 lifetime plus 70 years

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse

I had no idea how crazy the changes had been, but I knew it was related to Walt Disney. I think with how media is currently, and the new social media, we need to take a look at copyright and public domain. While I know that Mickey Mouse is important to the Disney corporation and is a true icon, I think ti completely be unable to use it in certain situations is a disservice since it’s become such a known icon and is actually integrated into our culture and our past in the U.S.