3 videos on copyright laws concerning technology

These three videos address copyright issues. The first documents a 16-year old girl named Alison who was made the subject of Virgin mobile ads in Australia without her consent. Virgin got the picture of her from Flickr where her friend posted it. I think this is wrong because she is not a legal age and she or her friend were never reached to inquire if they will allow Virgin to use the image. Companies should make an effort to contact the person who owns the image to receive their consent, no matter how old the person is. This instance is a basic breach of privacy rights. Just because a picture you like is on the internet does not mean you can take it and post it all over the country. I hope Alison wins her privacy back from Virgin because that is a right everyone is entitled to.

The next video talked about Photosynth which takes numerous photos and compiles them into one image. It is a neat program and I really liked the panoramic shots and images of the Notre Dame cathedral where you can really see the amount of 3D space in a 2D format. However, the guy talking about this program mentioned the pictures are taken from a variety of sources, such as the internet and cell phones. I wonder if Photosynth requires consent for photos to be used by anyone, even though I'm not sure in this case it is that important. None of these superimposed images are used for advertisements seen in public so I don't think it violates any privacy rights.

The last video discussed 'laws that choke creativity' and how kids these days are much different than adults were when they were young. He shows examples of this in how kids remake videos and mix tapes to say or portray something in a different way. He also touches on the subject of theses actions possibly "trespassing" violation rights, but in a different way than one of his first stories on how planes flying over a farm did not get permission to fly there and as a result caused the chickens on the farm to run into a wall in their following the plane's flight. In all these cases I think the main concept is protecting rights if new images are going to be brought into the public eye. This is a time where copyright laws should be followed all the way through because it is only fair to the parties involved. If someone does not want their picture on ads all the way around the world, they should get the choice to say no. However, creating images for our own personal use should not necessarily require permission. I know we do this all the time and if we needed permission constantly it would become a useless mode of creativity. All in all, when it comes down to public images, the laws should be followed much more carefully in order to not cause a havoc like it did in the first video.