Hi students, this is Thomas Jefferson
again. Your teacher has asked me to
explain the idea of transformation and
attribution in these so-called digital
stories you are creating. First remember
that real property such as a horse or my
house in Monticello is not the same
thing as intellectual property, such as
the stories you write or the images you
download from Google whatever Google is.
The difference is that we give the
creators of intellectual property
certain limited rights not simply
because they have a moral right to their
property but as an incentive for them to
create more intellectual property and
share it for the betterment of our
culture. We have to balance the
incentives to create intellectual
property with losses to society.
such the incentives to ownership may cause;
therefore, if you can't make your digital
stories, then maybe there is a loss that
outweighs the incentives given to the
creators of the image you are using.
That's why you can use the intellectual
property of others, so you can create new
content that will further our culture.
Therefore, we use the term transformative
to evaluate whether you have used
intellectual property in an appropriate
way; therefore, you have to transform the
original piece of intellectual property
into something a new and different form
of intellectual property. Unfortunately,
in my past lectures, I didn't explain the
concept of transformation very clearly.
It is often a very difficult idea to
understand because we don't always know
what is transformative and what is not
the reason is that it can be difficult
to tell the difference because people
see originality in different ways: what
may seem original to one person may not
be original to others it is not enough
to simply change the structure, say
changing one color to another to make
the new work transformative, so we have
to think of different ways of doing
things. One way is to make sure your work
has social benefit. I'm sure your teacher
thinks that creating a digital store
beneficial to your education so that may
be one factor in deciding that your use
of intellectual property is
transformative.
Another factor may be that you are using
the intellectual property for a
different purpose than did the creator
of the intellectual property you are
using. You are trying to use these images
or music to tell your own story which is
much different than was the purpose of
the original creator of that piece of
intellectual property. Finally the most
important reason may be that your work
is creative downloading a piece of music
just to listen to you write a story to find
some images and mix them together in new
ways that tell your own personal story.
It's your story; nobody else's;
therefore I'm sure it will be very
creative; however, this opportunity to use
intellectual property does not mean that
its creators have no moral rights.
 
