Copyright Assignment

For this assignment, I watched a parody of Hamlet in form of a CSI episode. I think this video is fine as far as copyright goes. The creators of the video actually use video from the television show CSI: Miami. However, they do not use very much of the show (less than 3 minutes), and they don't even use the sound at all. They have a voice over to make it look like the CSI characters are investigating the murder several of the characters in Hamlet. For the sections on Hamlet, the creators of the video act out the scenes themselves. I don't think they need to worry about copyright, since Shakespeare plays are in the public domain. Even so, they don't quote the play exactly word for word, and they only act out short portions.

The only place they might get in trouble is by using the CSI: Miami theme song, by The Who. They probably don't have permission to use that much of the song, even though it is not the entire song. Overall, they did a good job of conforming to copyright law. Also, I'm sure this was for educational use (students probably had to create some sort of interpretation of Hamlet after they read it to show that they understood the play).

(I could not embed this video, so here is the link.)
Video #1: Hamlet Parody

For the second video, I found a version of Hamlet told (or sung) in 3 minutes. I'm pretty sure this one is okay according to copyright law. The guy who made the video wrote and sang his own song with his own words. For the images, he used stick figure drawings, but they had cut-out photographs of celebrities' heads on top of the stick figures. He also used a cutout of Mufasa's head from the lion king and a cutout of the BK King's head. The list from the copyright lesson says that it is okay for students to use images in a multimedia project as long as they follow the multimedia guidelines. This video would be okay to use for educational purposes, and even if it was created for entertainment purposes, I still think it is okay, because only a portion of the pictures were used and the rest of the work was original.

Video #2: Three Minute Hamlet