A couple of years ago I gave up regular radio and asked for Sirius for Christmas. I was living in Birmingham (before I move back to Atlanta – again – for a job promotion that I walked out on, and my foray into teaching), and Birmingham radio? Well…it sucks. Really bad. Even in the past few years it has gotten worse. So I asked for the satellite radio subscription, and it’s been one of the best gifts I’ve received.

Recently, Sirius has embarked on a promotion for the upcoming Mama Mia movie – they’ve dedicated one of their channels for a limited time as Abba Radio – all Abba, all the time. Who’s the geek that is totally loving this? That’s right. It’s me. I think my boy is going to be thrilled when this movie finally comes out – not because he’s dying to go see it (quite the contrary, actually), but because it will mean I might finally shut up and stop singing Abba songs.

I’ve never pretended to have great musical taste – I like a very wide range of things. On Sirius, the channels that get the most use range from 50’s to 90’s, E Street Radio (Bruce Springsteen!), first wave, classic rewind, 90’s alternative, the singer/songwriter coffee house, hair nation (come on…Warrant? Motley Crue? Guns n Roses?), classical and Broadway hits, and of course, Howard Stern. See? All over the board. However, I’ll admit that I love the 80’s. I own a Nelson CD. Music-wise, I’m a little bit of a dork. And I’m fine with that.

Yesterday as I was driving home from school, I was singing along to Abba, complete with microphone hair brush. I’m sure the other drivers were loving that.

Do I care? Nope. Not even a little bit.

It was way more fun that trying to figure out how to teach the legal issues of ethics. One concept I’ll cover is Fair Use, which basically allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders. This comes in to play in journalism quite frequently – maybe the most obvious and easy example is the ability for a reviewer to quote from a book or movie when writing a review. The official definition I’m using says, “a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work.” Ok. So what does ‘transformative’ mean in this instance? Haha. “So what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules and varying court decisions.”

So basically, here’s a concept, but oops, we can’t define it, because apparently it’s undefinable, because the judges and lawmakers that created Fair Use want it to be wide open to interpretation. How the hell do you teach something like that? Maybe I’ll just make a big game board, and we can play a take off of ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey”…except I’ll call mine “Pin a guess at a definition on the legal term”.

Ok, so maybe it won’t be a big hit with the kids, but I bet it would go over great at law school parties!