Wk1 Reading: Copyright Issues

This weeks reading especially Part 1 discussed the infringement of copyright laws regarding sampling music. One of the videos I watched focused on Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk who is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution and another mash up artist named Danger Mouse.

Gregg has seen his share of legal troubles regarding whether he has a right to sample other artist’s music and call the finish mix his own creation. Gregg meticulously layers mixes of other artist’s music into an artistic form. From dance-crazed teenagers, night clubbers, to head bangers his music seems to be extremely popular. Brett Gaylor, creator of opensourcecinema.org, a video remix community wrote a documentary about copyright and the information age titled Rip: A mix manifesto. In this documentary Brett classifies Gregg’s sampling as original creative art. There are obviously some artists that have given permission for their work to be sampled but there are just as many artists who have gone to court over even the slightest semblance of their work. At one point in the class reading video Gregg Gillis boasts how he will use an Elton John sample with a tone that clearly hinted an air of controversy.

Danger Mouse created a piece that took a video song from one artist, the Beetles and merged it with a video song of another, Jay-Z. The idea was ingenious. The album was a statement and titled Grey Album. The Beetles were a white group and their video was in black and white from the 60’s. Jay-Z is a black rapper from today’s generation.

I personally think that the copyright issues have gotten out of hand. Danger Mouse’s work reminded me of the Bob Dylan assignment we did in Musical Theory and Applications class at Full Sail. We took Bob Dylan’s Mediterranean Homesick Blues lyrics and recorded ourselves singing his song to our composed music.

I have to say I agree with Lawrence Lessig’s statement that in this new age of technology people will and are beginning to find new ways of expressing themselves with music. But are they really? I read in a blog somewhere the following statement: “Authenticity is invaluable, originality is non-existent.” Wow right! That is some deep sh*#. But it is true to a degree.

I am a musician and understand the importance and need for an artist to protect their work. However, the copyright laws are changing and becoming more inhibiting as well. Who’s to blame for this chaos? The entertainers who create strictly for the dollar bill. Let’s keep it real here. Jimmy Douglass, music engineer for top celebrities like Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, and more was on campus and stated how much the industry has changed for the worse due to technology. And I have to agree with him. Musicianship is dying and that is why there are so many controversies surrounding copyright infringements.

Lessig stated that he wrote books to be published and for people to learn from them. Sure he doesn’t want someone to take his book change the cover and go out, republish the book and get paid for all the work he put into it. He did state, however, that he could not see himself getting upset if someone took what they learned from his book and created works of their own based off what they gained. That’s the reason he wrote the book.

The music industry used to be the same way. This may be the generation of mass sampling and mash up music, but there is a lack of original creativity in music today. I love all music even this mixtaped generation carries a slight air of creativity but only in half the sense. I love using my Garageband. I am grasping more and more the talent to sample loops and instruments to create, No to compliment my work. I look forward to seeing the mixed-taped generation fade out and 100% originality bloom back in.