A Dog Named Stella

(photos, post and screengrabs courtesy of Dog Named Stella)

For years I have been following the adventures of A Dog Named Stella on various social media platforms.  She is a yellow lab who lives in Freeport, Maine in the U.S. which gets a lot of snow, and a beautiful autumn season.  Stella's home is surrounded by trees which drop tons of leaves each fall which launched her into her global internet claim to fame......running and jumping into massive piles of leaves!

You can find Stella's adventures on her own YouTube channel (almost 40K subscribers, some videos with millions of views), on her Instagram account (400K followers), or her Facebook account (200K+ followers).  During the height of the pandemic quarantine, I would hunker in my bed at night and pull up videos on Stella's Instagram account on my phone, and watch her joyous adventures.  So many people posted comments, including myself, how the videos of this exuberant dog helped them escape the COVID-19 fears, and immerse themselves in the hilarity, fearlessness and joy that is Stella's world, whether jumping into leaves, wallowing in mud puddles or swimming in lakes to retrieve a ball.  She was a source of escape and sheer joy.

As Stella's fame grew astronomically over years, so has the intellectual property awareness and knowledge of Stella's owner, Jody Hartman.  I am almost 100% confident he did NOT read one of our required readings this week on Intellectual Property & Social Media - a Guide for Content Creators and Meme Sharers, Ahmed, A (2018).  But he has acquired the knowledge how best to protect the copyright of his edited and music-scored uploaded videos. Years ago, I did not notice any copyright info on his videos, if they were there. His videos now have a prominent digital watermark mentioned in Ahmed's article to help protect his creative content.

Similarly, his Instagram posts (below) have a prominent digital watermark.  FYI, this screen grab above shows "Judith" who is Stella's fantasy alter-ego when she puts on her wings and cap and flies into the leaf piles.

Also, I have noticed that Hartman seems to have gone to more generic, purchasable background music, or has composed his own music, as opposed to editing Stella's videos to popular songs which he has done.  When he did that, he would credit the songwriters.  

Now, Stella has her niece, Mabel, living with her, who Hartman recently acquired as a puppy.  It will be interesting to see if Hartman eventually rolls out new social media accounts, with her own copyright watermarks, just for Mabel.