Drill rap is somewhat a new form of gangster rap, with the genre of music made popular in the United States, and spreading to western markets like the United Kingdom and Australia with great success. Drill rap mainly focuses on the realistic and gritty life on the streets of tough neighbourhoods, with the original pieces coming out of Chicago and south London in the early 2010’s.

But the genre has increased greatly in popularity within Australia due to the success of local artists. The most well known drill rap to come out of Australia comes from two artists from Sydney’s western suburbs, one being ‘Hooligan Hefs’, the other a group called ‘One Four’. Both consist of a large number of men with pacific islander heritage, and although only a few members sing, the group around both artists is large and supportive.

Drill rap reflects a more realistic way of life to that of hip hop rap for many young people in struggling areas, this is also why the music is not often sent mainstream, with the gritty and violent tone not appealing to mainstream markets. This is where platforms like YouTube are excellent for exposing drill rappers to a wide audience, and this is where the Australian Artists found their big break.

In relation to the possible negative effects of drill rap videos being seen online, Charles Hymas wrote in London’s ‘Daily Telegraph’:

Ben McOwen Wilson, managing director of YouTube UK, rejects arguments that drill music should be banned, because he says the company believes the platform should offer “a place for those who did not have a voice.” He said that as long as drill artists abide by YouTube’s rules, the firm’s philosophy was to allow “different points of view to be heard even when they might be contentious”.

‘Hooligan Hef’s’ have accumulated over 6 million views on their music videos, and ‘One Four’ over 12 million, these are extremely impressive numbers for young artists from Australia. Australian drill rap has grown popularity in recent months with ‘One Four’ releasing two singles, both gaining over 4 million views each. Their music has attracted interest from around the world, prompting Vice Australia to do a short documentary.

In the short video the group explains how they were inspired by a UK group known as the ‘Harlem Spartans’, and how the UK scene was their biggest inspiration:

“The music meant we could put our lives in a story. We went with the UK, not the US, because we can’t relate to shootings,” but, “We can relate to stabbings and punch-ons though.”

The success of these Australian artists show their ability to create music that is both relatable to those here in Australia, but also entertaining enough for people all around the world to jump in on. It also shows different genres of music making its way around the world and changing depending on the location its created.

I am a big fan just quietly.

American Pie is a movie I had often heard about, people around me would often reference it, and it was joked about in TV shows and YouTube videos. It was one of those movies that people would ask if you’d seen, and you just reply ‘of course’ out of fear of missing out.

But truthfully I had no idea what it was about, so a couple weeks ago I decided to give the first movie a watch. The tittle certainly dose not give away the general theme of the movie, and maybe that’s why I had no idea what the movie was actually about, but as a viewer you get the overarching theme of the movie pretty quickly.

The movie follows a group of American high school kids (mainly focusing on four boys) who intend to lose their virginity before graduation and the beginning of college. As you can imagine, it does not go very smoothly, with the ups and downs of high school life, as well as the the awkward characters and the situations they put themselves in, it creates a very funny movie with many scenes being quite relatable to the intended audience.

The movie is clearly targeted to people around the same age as the characters, high school to college students, about 13 to 23 years old. As it is also set in America it is obviously most relatable to American students, however I think it is easy for young people from other western cultures to understand and adapt to their own experiences and circumstances.

The movie as a whole can be seen as a sort of sexual education documentary on what to do (and not do) when teens find themselves in similar situations. Sharyn Pearce writes in her academic journal ‘Sex and the cinema: what American Pie teaches the young.’ that:

“The American Pie series as a whole can consistently be ‘read’ as a contemporary sex education manual, where such manuals almost always inscribe and endorse the approved sexual conduct of the day. Traditionally, too, sex instruction manuals have been concerned at least as much with moral as with sexual education, and arguably that is the case here too. “

I wasn’t even born when the first movie came out, but I can imagine teenagers at the time would of much rather learnt about sexual activity from the film, rather than their parents or teachers. Catherine Ashcraft wrote a journal article on the need to:

“Critically incorporate popular culture into sex education efforts to develop programs that resonate with teens’ experiences and, at the same time, allow them to construct more equitable social relations.”

Whilst I do not think the movie is the most accurate informational tool for teens, I think it creates a bridge to learn more, and does so in a very lighthearted and hilarious way. If I was reviewing the film I would give it a solid 9/10, recommend to a friend.

Whether we like it or not, we are always being watched. In this day and age we are always monitored, whether that be in public through security cameras, or at home through our internet data, someone, somewhere knows what we are doing.

The question is do we really care if the government and companies are taking our storing our data? I think the majority of the world can see the benefits of having our data recorded and stored, the most obvious is stopping crimes and terrorist acts, and I think people are willy for their privacy to be encroached on a little if it means stopping the bad guys.

The use of advanced surveillance cameras in places like China are put in place to keep the citizens safe. But what about the ranking of people for the actions they take, a future where you cant mess up, not even once, or your personal score will go down.

It is a scary future, the days of mucking around as a kid may soon be over.

Would you like to live in a world that is just open, open to be changed and developed in any way possible, but not everything works smoothly? Or would you like to live in a world where you have near to no control over changes, but everything is crisp and perfectly executed?

Well we live in a world with both, we often have the freedom to explore, but laws and restrictions keep us in line. This is also seen in the tech world with android being considered an open source, and Apples ios considered closed.

Closed-source operating systems use code that is proprietary and kept secret to prevent its use by other entities. Whilst open-source operating systems use code that is freely-distributed and available to anyone to use, even for commercial purposes.

Open source allows for user development and collaboration that can create software that can dramatically change an operating system, essentially ‘jail-breaking’, but without the need to break in. This is where android encourages users to develop, and Apples ios try’s to shut them out.

In 1969 Paul Zindel released a play titled ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’, fast-forward to the year 2017 and an Oscar winning film titled ‘The Shape of Water’ is released by director Guillermo del toro. What is the connection between these two works that were released 48 years apart? Well many people including the son of Paul Zindel, David, believed that ‘The Shape of Water’ stole themes, plot points, characters, and dialogue from ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’, filing a copyright infringement and claiming much of the film had been plagiarised from his father’s work, but what exactly is copyright and plagiarism?

Copyright and Plagiarism:

Copyright is defined as the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material. Whilst plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own, thus plagiarism is more of an ethical issue, and is generally not a legal issue. In terms of the comparison between ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’, and ‘The Shape of Water’ firstly the similarities needed to be established, and whether what had been copied amounts to reproducing the same expression of ideas and not just common themes.

However, copyright does not protect an idea, it protects the material expression of an idea. An idea itself cannot be protected by copyright law, only what those ideas have transformed into, this is why many movies have similar plots to others. There is nothing in copyright law that prevents taking inspiration or ideas from other sources or creators when producing ones work, however if the inspiration becomes copying another person’s work in part or in whole copyright law can be enforced. Copyright protects the form of expression of the idea, rather than the idea itself.

Similarities:

When glanced over the two works seem quite similar, ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’ is set in the 1960s and is about a female janitor who is working is a secret laboratory owned by the government, who then tries to release a sea creature from being killed after the creature’s refusal to cooperate with the government researchers. Compared to ‘The Shape of Water’ which also takes place in the 1960s, features a female janitor working in a research lab, and the plot revolves around saving a sea creature from being killed due to a lack of cooperation during lab experiments. Both have rather similar plot points, and characters alike, probably one of the biggest differences at a glance is that in ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’ the sea creature is a dolphin, whilst the one in ‘The Shape of Water’ is very much a fictional, alien like character.

This was not the first plagiarism accusation against Del Toro and ‘The Shape of Water’. After the first trailer was released some viewers couldn’t help but notice the similarities between a 2015 short film created by students of the Netherland Film Academy called ‘The Space Between Us’, and Del Toro’s film. Both plots include a women janitor at a research centre who falls in love with a sea creature, and had many of the same visual effects and scenes. However, this never found its way into court, with the Netherland Film Academy sitting down with Del Toro, and releasing a statement that read as follows:

“After recently screening ‘The Shape of Water’ and following conversations that took place in a very constructive and friendly atmosphere, The Netherlands Film Academy believes that both ‘The Shape of Water’ and our short, ‘The Space Between Us,’ have their own very different identities. They have separate timelines of development and are not in any conceivable way interlinked or related. The students and “The Space Between Us” team were very excited and grateful to have the opportunity to actively discuss the creative inspirations of both films in a personal conversation with Mr. del Toro.”

Court Case:

Paul Zindel filed a lawsuit in February of 2018 against Del Toro and ‘The Shape of Water’, claiming the film had stolen themes, plot points, characters, and characters from his fathers play ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’. However, Judge Percy Anderson concluded that the two works were substantially different, and the similarities were too generic to be copyrighted.

“Although the play and the film share the basic premise of an employee at a scientific facility deciding to free a creature that is subjected to scientific experiments, that concept is too general to be protected,” Anderson wrote. “There are some minor similarities in the two works’ expressive choices, such as the fact that the main character is a janitorial worker, that the test subject is of interest for military purposes, and that the escape plan involves the use of a laundry cart. However, the similarities generally end there.”

When asked if the film had plagiarised the 1969 play, Del Toro said that he had never heard of the play before the allegations, and rather that he had been wanting to make a film in the traditional style of ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’, rather than Zindel’s play.

Conclusion:

Copyright and plagiarism are a difficult issue when it comes to the media, as the line between taking ideas from another source, and plagiarising another source is very fine. In regards to the case between Paul Zindel’s play ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’ and Guillermo Del Toro’s film ‘The Shape of Water’, it is not surprising that some would accuse Del Toro of plagiarism, as some of the ideas in his film are very similar to those in Zindel’s play, however ideas are not covered by copyright law, only the execution of those ideas.

One could argue that Del Toro didn’t do the ethical thing by taking ideas from Zindel’s play and reimagining them, but Del Toro argued that he had never seen or heard of Zindel’s play. So whilst he judge found he was legally clear, it’s hard to determine if he was ethically in the right.

References:

• https://theconversation.com/the-shape-of-water-plagiarism-accusations-explained-90812

• https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/shape-of-water-copyright-suit-1202882975/

• https://globalnews.ca/news/3973507/guillermo-del-toro-copying-shape-of-water-space-between-us/

• https://researchguides.uic.edu/c.php?g=252209&p=1682805

• https://www.indiewire.com/2018/01/the-shape-of-water-the-space-between-us-1201920378/

• https://www.copyright.gov/title17/

• Mark Pearson and Mark Polden, 2019, ‘The Journalist Guide to Media Law’

We live in a world full of media content, from songs, movies, games, online videos, TV series, etc. With all of this readily available content comes a wealth of fan made creativity and ideas, however it is a fine line when using content owned by others, content they have copyrighted.

The argument comes when somebody re-shares, or uses some one else’s content for their monetary gain. But then there is the other side of the coin, where you could argue that people sharing and remaking or mixing content that is not their own is fair use once the original publisher has made their content public, and that it could also be seen as free advertisement, as the content may be seen by users who would have not come across it originally.

But it is a fine line between fair use and copyright, and moving into the future we may see similar systems like article 13 in the UK all across the world.

When starting my digital artefact I wasn’t too sure as to where it was going to go, and how i would communicate content. After experimenting for a couple of weeks with different types of content, posted at different times, and with different hashtags and captions, I think I have found a mix that works relatively well.

As you can see most of the posts in my DA have gained relatively good traction, some far better than other. This is due to experimenting with different types of content, at different times, and with some different hashtags. I have seen dramatic changes in traction when using different sets of hashtags, and can see a clear difference in those in which users interact with more.

Moving forward I think I will stick to the content that I know the users engage with, as well as use the hashtags that bring in the most new users. I could also try and change the content and try and target a specific audience.

A lot of the content is being seen by many users that are not following the page, this is possibly one area in which I could improve upon and find out ways to get users to interact with the page and posts more.

However overall I am happy how my digital artefact is progressing, and think with a few changes I may be able to create greater user interaction, and encourage more users to follow my account.

https://www.instagram.com/futuretech5000/?hl=en

As a race we are advancing so fast that in the not so distant future we may not need to interact with another human being again, and that’s pretty crazy. We have an unhealthy relationship with technology, but can you blame us, everything you could possibly want can be found on the internet.

Technology and the internet has placed us as individuals in a bubble where in a lot of situations we no longer need a physical human interaction, and if do need to speak to another person, we do so over the internet.

This however would not be a healthy way to live. As much as you can learn from the internet, nothing can supplement real life experience, and as much as you can feel as though you have experienced something through a screen, it cant match what it is like to experience it in person.

Living on an online world allows users to show all the perfections in their life, a frame of their reality. This is why living in the moment and experiencing things first hand is so important. I hope my kids grow up in a world that is still full of real life experiences, and not just YouTube videos.