Regifting the Key of Awesome - Santa is sexy and he knows it....

This festive season there is nothing better than the gift of laughter, especially if it comes nicely giftwrapped in a pretty layer of irony.
The Key of Awesome are back at it in time for the festive season, this time they are offering a great parody of one of this years pop music hits LMFAO's "Sexy and I know it".

Where do these guys come up with these unbelievable parodies?
They are brilliant, and prove that all you need is a great sense of humour, some basics tools and passion to be a huge internet sensation.

If you haven't seen the LMFAO video it is very funny in it's own right.

Their first video, "Party Rock Anthem" made the "pop" world take notice of them, but it has been their follow up hit, "Sexy & I Know It" that has got the tongues wagging and the Key of Awesome working overtime on this great Christmas Parody.
Unfortunately the "official video" for Sexy & I Know It has been removed from youtube due to nudity and sexual content violations, which is odd as it doesn't really involve either really compared to other clips that are still on youtube. This is a very interesting side discussion as what constitutes lewd content these days? In my opinion this video is not at all pornographic, or even sexually offensive as it is very clear that they have made this video with their tongues firmly pressed against their collective cheeks. Still, a bit of scandal gives them another bite of the cherry as fans talk about it and look for ways to source and share the video via other forms of social media. Youtube has still done them a great service as they have reached hundreds of millions of views since it's debut a couple of months ago.
Never fear, there is always another way, well for the short term anyway!

LMFAO is a "band" from the US. They are a hip hop duo, DJ Redfoo (Stefan Kendal Gordy, born September 3, 1975) and his nephew SkyBlu (Skyler Husten Gordy, born August 23, 1986). They also have an extended entourage of rappers, producers, & dancers.The group formed in 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Redfoo is also the son of music mogul Berry Gordy, SkyBlu a grandson. Their music incorporates a theme of partying and drinking, and the group commonly refers to their music style as "party rock".

Their first video "Party Rock Anthem" from their album "Sorry for Party Rocking" was released at the start of this year, and pays homage to some great bits and pieces like the movie "28 Days", and the Melbourne Shuffle - the dance step that they themselves make great use of.

LMFAO also pumped out this great track a couple of years ago that was the start of it all - "I'm In Miami Bitch" which is a little on the NSFW side, but really sums up the intention of these dudes - a couple of rich kids that come from music heavyweight heritage that are just hard core party people that will stop at nothing to have a good time. I can imagine that there are a couple of more hardcore versions of this video out there for the "club scene".

The game of Intellectual Property & the collective copyright policy.

Lets see how long this above clip for "Sexy and I know it" lasts on youtube.
On the surface it seems to be a clear violation of the Youtube copyright policy, but because they have flipped the video over (notice that the writing is all backwards) does that constitute enough of a change from the "original content and/or intention" to make it an original performance again? Me thinks not.

This whole intellectual copyright thing is such a grey area and usually the side with the most capital / money / heavyweight lawyers tends to put way too much pressure on the side of the content creator / sharer and the video's are generally taken down, so I apologise now in advance if by the time you get to this article the video has already been removed.

Due to the complex nature of sharing copyrighted material across a multitude of political systems the whole who owns what thing has become very complex. Websites are generally bound by the laws in which the content physically resides. If you are running your site off a server in the USA, and your company is registered in the USA, then you are bound by the laws of the USA.
However what makes all of this complicated is sites like Facebook, that clearly state that by uploading any content, images or video, you are also waiving any claim of ownership of said content and passing this onto them. As soon as you upload it, they own it and can do whatever they want with it. One imagines that this is to protect them from time wasting intellectual property disputes.
A few years back they was some discussion of their use of users personal photos in advertisements on their site, as a way to make their advertsing more "interactive, sincere and personable" but it just came across as creepy. They essentially would post photos from your albums on your friends pages and match the intention of the photo (you and your friends at the beach for instance) with a product (sunscreen) that they had an advertiser for. This style of advertising could be very effective, and quite legal in it's approach, but for the short time it was in place the buzz was that people just felt violated.

To break it down, this is from an amercian university website in their course / staff notes, so I cannot guarantee its' complete validity or accuracy but it does give you an idea in case you are interested in all of this and how it applies to posting online.

Introduction

The Internet has transformed the way we work, learn, and play in the United States. It is unavoidable, therefore, that the Internet has also created revolutionary changes in our legal system.
This section looks at how digital law affects community college teaching in areas of copyright, privacy, and intellectual property rights.

A Primer on Copyright, Privacy and Intellectual Property in the Digital Information Age

Penalties for infringement of copyright
This may seem backwards to start with the penalty for breaking the law before discussing what the law is but in teaching theory this is called an "attention getter." The penalty is stiff: the court can award up to $100,000 for each separate act of willful infringement. Willful infringement means that you knew you were infringing and you did it anyway. Ignorance of the law, though, is no excuse. If you don't know that you are infringing, you still will be liable for damages - only the amount of the award will be affected. Then there are attorneys' fees.... The point is you should pay attention to the following section.

Copyright basics

What is copyright?
Boiled down to its essence, copyright protection turns on the existence of two essential elements: the creation of an original expression that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Facts, discoveries, and ideas in and of themselves are not subject to copyright protection because they do not exist as a result of an act of authorship. It is not required to register a copyright since protection is granted as soon as the work is fixed in a tangible medium

Who can claim copyright?

There are four forms of copyright ownership:

1. The author of the work.
2. Joint ownership when there are two or more authors.
3. Collective ownership contains a number of contributions, each of which is a separate and independent work that are assembled into a collective whole, e.g. an encyclopedia.
4. "Work for Hire": The first is a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment. The second type of work made for hire is a work that has been specifically ordered or commissioned.

Exclusive rights of copyright owners

1. Reproduce the copyrighted work
2. Prepare derivative works or adaptations based on the copyrighted work
3. Distribute copies of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending
4. Perform the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, motion pictures, and other audiovisual works
5. Display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work.
6. How long is a copyright good? For works created after December 31, 1978, the term of copyright protection is the life of the author plus 70 years. For joint works, the term is the life of the last surviving author plus 70 years from the first date of publication or 120 years from creation of the work, whichever is shorter. For works created before 1978 that are still entitled to copyright protection, the total term of the copyright is 95 years.

Educational Fair Use Policy

Now for the good news. Teachers are granted special rights to use copyrighted material under what is called the "fair use policy."  Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.

Fair use balancing test
There are four primary factors used to determine if instructors can use copyrighted material in their classroom. (Uses on the left tend to tip the balance in favor of fair use. The use on the right tends to tip the balance in favor of the copyright owner - in favor of seeking permission. The uses in the middle, if they apply, are very beneficial: they add weight to the tipping force of uses on the left; they subtract weight from the tipping force of a use on the right.)

1. The purpose and character of the use
including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes. While not at all determinative, courts have generally ruled that preference will be granted to works that were created for non-profit educational purpose

• Nonprofit
• Educational
• Personal
• Criticism
• Commentary
• News
• reporting
• Parody
• Otherwise "transformative" use
• Commercial

2. Nature of the work
This second factor acknowledges that fact that some works are simply more deserving of copyright protection than others. Consequently, this portion of the test looks at the original work and attempts to determine where that work is in the spectrum of worthiness of copyright protection.

• Fact
• Published
• A mixture of fact and imaginative
• Imaginative
• Unpublished

3. Amount & substantiality of portion used
The third factor looks at the amount and substantiality of the copying in relation to the work as a whole. However, the critical determination is whether the quality and value of the materials used are reasonable in relation to the purpose of copying. This is not a pure ratio test in that using a whole work may be fair use in some circumstances, whereas using a tiny fraction of a work does not qualify for fair use in other circumstances. Therefore, the quantity, as well as the quality and importance, of the copied material must be considered. Some Justices have looked to see that "no more was taken than was necessary" to achieve the purpose for which the materials were copied.

• Small amount
• Large amount

4. Economic impact on market value of the work
The fourth factor considers the extent of harm to the market or potential market of the original work caused by the infringement. This test takes into account harm to the original, as well as harm to derivative works

• Small impact
• Significant impact