Thinking About the Essay

I am a little worried about the essay. I'm starting to worry that it will be much more opinion than fact. I know how I feel about the subject but am unsure of how to tie in my research. I'm also having a hard time pinpointing what resources are appropriate for my arguments. I think I need to have a firmer idea of the parameters of the essay. Is it supposed to be argumentative? I imagine it must be, but in that case I need to be able to support my opinions with solid resources. I'm also a bit worried about the time frame, although that has a lot more to do with my personal schedule with other classes.

I want my essay to communicate how I feel about copyright and art. How the current copyright laws discourage individual creativity and create an enclave for those designated as 'artists' or 'authors' to become static and pretentious. I want to use graffiti to illustrate this point. I feel that graffiti is a good medium to show my perspective on the issue. I understand that creative work should earn the creator benefits, and I am not actually opposed to the idea of paying to use someone's work or design. Rather, it is the exclusion of using their ideas in one's own ideas that bothers me the most. In this way, people who choose (when they choose) can purchase goods and services that therefore pay and benefit the creators of those things, whether they be clothes, novels, furniture, or art. On the other hand, a person could also choose to create or do the service themselves. When the latter occurs I feel that people should not be punished for using existing precedence to build upon, such as taking inspiration from a designer or author that they enjoy and making their own versions.

I feel that graffiti is a good example for my point but that it might be a bit vague and narrow of an example to convey the bigger ideas that I want to present. I need to know how much of the essay should be exploring the example itself or using the example to open up bigger issues and discussions. Should graffiti be my running theme or the subject of the essay? Hopefully we will get a little more into the specifics of the essay in the next few class periods and I will get a better idea of how to approach my essay.

Perhaps a basic outline for my paper could be:

Introduction
Overview of current copyright laws versus how I perceive they should be
Presentation of graffiti as a forum of multimedia writing that supports my view
Examples exploring graffiti and it's relationship to topics of authorship and value
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Conclusion

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYdrli-s5I-ZZDZrNDJoY18yNmN2Yzd3eGNq&hl=en