Somnium Magnus

Lately I have found myself quite literally buried in the law; more directly, I have been immersed in Copyright law, Trademark law, and the legal ramifications that technology has wrought upon the United States and the rest of the world. These various technologies, such as the Internet via networked computers and mobile broadband, increasingly “smart” phones, tablet computers stocked full of software applications and many other modern conveniences, have unleashed a storm of court litigation in order to establish just what is legally viable in the commercial marketplace.
 
To help sort through all the red tape that is intrinsic with our modern world, I enlisted the assistance of one of my favorite modern conveniences, iTunesU. iTunesU is a fantastic platform to gather information from some of the brightest minds in higher education across specialties for free.
 
The first of three podcasts that I listened to was a presentation given by New York University Law School titled “Evolving Technology, Democracy and the Law”. Richard Sherwin, one of the speakers and Professor of Law at NYU, delivers an excellent presentation that really hits home with the transmedia theme of this blog. Sherwin teaches a “Visual Persuasion” course that explores the importance and power of properly using visual images to deeply impact the way people see the world around them through digital mediums and how the knowledge and use of semiotics dramatically can affect a content consumer’s perception of reality. Sherwin uses an exhibit of the acquitted L.A. police officers involved in the high profile police brutality case of Rodney King to persuasively make his point as to the power of visual technology to change minds. In this case, it was the defenses use of a digital version of the originally analog tape to successfully prove their point that Rodney King was actually controlling the situation by choosing to repeatedly stand up against the will of the arresting officers, which in turn caused them to continue to bludgeon him into submission. In this case, the digital footage told a drastically different story than what was immediately visible in the prior version. According to Sherwin, and many others who agree, society now has the ability to follow multiple and fragmented storylines with ease across devices, yet many of us continue to struggle with the blurring between reality and fiction.
 
Second, also from New York Law and in the IP/Technology aspect of law, a podcast featuring John Squires and Thomas Biemer: "The Shape Shifting Subject Matter of U.S. Patent Law" podcast gives an excellent discourse on the matter of junk patents v. novel patents, video games, virtual worlds, and the evolving United States patent system. Thomas Biemer, originally a commercial litigator turned hybrid general commercial litigator/ IP Patent attorney speaks for the most part during this podcast and covers the barely controllable confusion over computer related software patents and the different camps that have argued the ways in which the issues regarding patents should be seen in the eyes of the law. Mr. Biemer sits in an interesting liaison translator position, where he is the go-between between engineer scientific inventor types of individuals and the deciding judge and jury. Biemer speaks specifically about the State Street v. Signature Financial case in which he was involved on the defendant side of the fence. His client signature financial had developed what was understood to be a “hub and spoke” business method for conducting trades with mutual funds, and sought to decide whether or not business methods themselves were actually patentable items.
 
The last podcast, from Stanford University, is “LegalFrontiers in Digital Media: Emerging Issues in Mobile Content Distribution”. This podcast is surprisingly current in their hypotheses of the mobile world circa 2008 looking forward towards the current convergence of entertainment, mobile, wireless, and digital that is now nearly ubiquitous in 2013. One of the biggest factors, both now and then, revolves around the shaping of consumer behaviors in the advertising models for the mobile space and the innovation companies and entrepreneurs will eventually be guided towards creating in order to monetize content.
 

All three of these podcasts go hand in hand with transmedia on multiple levels, and we are in an age of increasingly confusing rules and regulations that we must adhere to if we intend on operating a successful media company. The biggest benefit to these rules and regulations, overlooked by some however, is the fact that once they are intimately understood, it becomes far easier to know what you legally can and can not do. That said, it is well worth any content creator’s time to explore exactly how to make your project fall in line with your legal obligations, both for your potential consumer’s protection, as well as your own.