This
week on our Media Asset Creation class we began with the discussion of
Copyrights. During my Bachelor's Degree in Broadcasting, I took a law
class and we discussed the topic of copyrights, especially Media related
copyright law. We covered censorship, trademarks, music and art
copyrights. A lot has changed after that class. On the "Fairy
Tale" video, I saw how, basically, copyright holder (artists) can own the
rights of their work, almost forever. When I took the law class, the
artist had the right of their work during their lifetime and 75 or 50 years
(depending of the medium, music, paint) after their death. Now, by the
fair use act, works can be used as long it is a short amount of the work that
is used for teaching, critique, illustration of a topic. For me, Fair Use
is still a very thin line, in the area of education. What if a movie producer
or a musician doesn't want their material use for educational purposes?
In
the Good Copy, Bad Copy movie there was an important point that was brought to
the topic of the music industry. If the user pays an "x" amount
of dollars for connecting on the internet and download or use the music to
their liking, the user will be spending almost the same amount of money that
he/she spends on a music store. Could this mean that the music industry
can't control what the public wants, and what musical output they want from
their favorite artist?
It's
not that artist shouldn't get payed for their artistic output, but we have seen
how musicians rebeled against record companies for not allowing them to do the
work they want, and now they support the same companies that
"restrict" their creativity (does Metallica vs. Napster rings a
bell?). How many musicians "used" part of other musicians'
songs/music as a base for their own music? Let me give you a couple of
examples: the guitar riff at the end of the "Ballad of John &
Yoko" by The Beatles, is the same guitar riff of "Lonesome tears of
my eyes" by Johnny Burnett. "The old man down the road" from
John Fogerty sounds almost the same as "Green River" from Creedence
Clearwater Revival, in which Fogerty was a member and main songwriter and which
the former members of CCR sued Fogerty for plagiarized himself, but the judge
decided in favor of Fogerty after listen him playing both songs with his guitar
in court (listen to both songs on the You Tube videos below). Keith
Richards once said that we are like sponges and absorb everything we heard.
Not a direct quote, but if you want to listen to him, I recommend to
watch "The History of Rock and Roll: Guitar Heroes".
As
a semi pro musician, I'm not an avid fan of sampling, I feel that
"artists" that use sampling don't want to push their creative juices
to come up with original music. On the other hand, it takes a lot of
creativity to mix different beats and different samples of music to come up
with the re-mixes we heard in parties and on the radio. It's incredible
how in Brazil they come up with these big parties. "Music
producers" in Brazil they create these re-mixes and record them on CD and
sell them as a promotion to the big parties they made.
Finally,
on the movie side, Nigeria has come up with a smart way of promoting their
movie industry. They can't copy or pirate the productions they do over
there, but they can copy all the productions outside of Nigeria.
My Response:
My Response:
Thank you for creating a blog that organized some your prior knowledge about copyright law with the readings from this week. Your blog clarified for me some of the most important aspects from the videos and articles. While being new to the whole topic of copyright law, taking in all of this information in one week was like trying to drink from a fire hydrant! Even as I was taking notes, I would stop, write some things down and think, "I know that's really important" but I wasn't able to connect it the other things that made it important. Specifically, your reference to the the video, Good Copy/Bad Copy, I noted the idea of a flat user fee and how the presenter stated that artists would benefit more from this type of agreement because they would be making profit as opposed to no profit. I'm still not totally clear on what that would mean to the artist but it made sense to me. I've even looked into Rhapsody and some other companies that offer unlimited downloads for a flat fee but I've not been very impressed with the limited range of artists the companies currently offer. I do see a future in that type of marketing that has already pretty much take over other commercial industries here in the U.S. (like the Television/ Advertising industries for example). In your blog you allude to the possibility that record companies and artists might lose control over what the public wants. I thought that was an interesting question as you presented it. It made me wonder who is really selling to whom here? Hasn't it always been the public that determined the fiscal success of art or is that just how I think it should be? That question leads to a whole other conversation about cultural and artistic evolution, for another blog!
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