Week 1- Readings – Copyright Issues

I'm trapped!

Wow!  This is the first thing that comes to mind.  Secondly, thank you Joe for breaking this into three parts.  I couldn’t figure out why in the beginning and now I get it.  I was overwhelmed with the amount of different aspects, viewpoints, and now thoughts I have, to copyright issues there truly are, and whether they are legal, personal, artistic, or just selfish. 

Larry Lessig from Creative Commons struck a chord with me in his TED presentation when he said,  “That we need to connect with our kids, we watched TV and they make TV.”  We can’t make them passive; we’re making them “pirates.”  Are we in a “digital prohibition?”  What an insightful and thought provoking question?   I agree that they know what they are doing – digitially – (and as seen throughout the videos) is against the law, and they don’t care.  The question is should we?

While watching about the copyright laws in particular to music I kept thinking about a conversation that my husband and I have had many times about how there is no new music trends.  Yes, I know I am old…er, but even when I listen to what my daughters listen to it is rap, pop, there is nothing really new though.  Then watching these “producers” talk about remixing music; that they are not musicians, they just produce. I was saddened about the loss of creativity of the actual musician, setting the world on fire with a new trend, style, or genre of music.  These are the artists who deserve the advantages of the copyright laws.  They are creating for the most part something from nothing (at least the riff is not copied and pasted from one track to another, they had to remember it in their head if they stole it!) 

I appreciate the cultural aspects of taking for instance US songs and adding the Brazil flair to them, but to say that the artist in Brazil is a musician, this I do not agree with.  It was not their original song.  I, who cannot hold a tune, but I can go into GarageBand and create music thanks to technology.  I may be expressing myself, but I don’t think I should be able to take the credit for the remix of Pink Floyd and Justin Bieber! 

I appreciate the laws of Fair Use, especially as an educator.  I hope they are a further extended for not only in education, but also for social and historical aspects, to serve the public.  And that copyright laws are not used as a form of censorship. 

But as all the videos and the article discuss, back to Lessig, let’s be “open for business?!”  The extremism isn’t working.  Let the artists decide on how they want to get compensated, and have the business embrace the free/freer content.  Will this work?  Will the lawyers allow this?  Will big businesses allow this?  Will the whole media playing field change?  As said in “Good Copy Bad Copy” we need to rethink how we do business and things will need to change drastically.  I found it humorous when Dr. Ferrara from NYU said that “creativity is on the line,” but I was wondering if he meant that creativity is “online!”