After watching Good Copy Bad Copy I
learned that it is extremely hard to be a music producer, especially hip-hop in
today’s society given the multitude of technological advances. I have heard of
copyright infringement in the music industry before and have read many articles
centered on artists suing other artists, writers, producers, etc. over
copyright issues. The film Good Copy Bad Copy immediately brings up the term
sampling (3:25), which is basically when a hip hop producer takes a recorded
piece of music and plays with it in the studio, most of the time altering it in
some way and turning it into something else. Every time they do this they are
at risk of being sued for copyright. I have heard many remixes of songs on the
radio, online, and all over many technological mediums so I was genuinely
shocked to learn how much of an issue this is. The example they provided owas Dr.
Dre using only a 2 second guitar riff from the song “Get Off your Ass and Jam”, which
was highly manipulated. The court decided that it was illegal to take this from
the recording and it was a wakeup call for the industry. The film highly
recommends that you license what you sample but this is often hard because
people like Girl Talk sample many different songs in seconds of their work. It was interesting to learn that something so common and done by so many people can cause a lawsuit, and an expensive one at that
Who really
owns what? (8:18) After they posed this question in the film it really made my
mind explode. When someone writes a song or makes music, people, especially
those who are not musical experts, assume that this thing they created came
from their own mind, therefore they own it. Aside from music, when someone says
something we assume it is theirs because it came out of their mouth and they
formed the words. This though reminded me of our earlier discussions that words
are metaphors, metaphors that as people today we did not create and that did
not originate in our brains, so who really owns what. (Mind still blown)
The last point from the film that
stood out to me was the proclamation that the Internet today has created a
mixtape culture and that everyone is a creator (53:46). I find this to be
extremely relevant. I spend a large portion of my time on the Internet and
everywhere you look there are things that have been remixed: music, images,
videos, etc.. I myself create things on the Internet everyday. There is no
doubt that the Internet has helped creativity flourish, therefore trying to
battle it with outdated laws is pointless. At the end of the film they mention
that creativity is on the line and that we need to find a balance between
protecting the rights of people that own property as well as the right of
generations of future people to create. The film makes it clear that this issue
was inevitable given our new technology and global nature of the media. The
problem with textuality is that it is extremely large and comes in many
different mediums. It started as a word that was tangible and has now expanded
to something that exists in many forms and can be shared across the globe. I
think textuality is a dilemma because how can you control it or understand something
that exists everywhere and is used by everyone.
- Cailyn Callaway
As you said Cailyn, when they presented the question “who really owns what?” (8:18) it blew my mind as well. This made me think of the concept of: is the Mona Lisa hanging in a museum really the actual Mona Lisa or is it a painting of the Mona Lisa or is it a painting of the painting of the Mona Lisa? I never really thought (well I thought but didn’t really assume it did) that when an artist, such as Maroon 5 creates a song, even one second of it could have come from an already produced song or could have been inspired by an already created song. We assume that if an artist releases a song, unless they are known to remix or if it says it is a remix or remake of a classic song, it came from their minds. It seems in the music industry, that artists who aren’t either explicitly re-recording a classic song in their own way (i.e. Adam Levine performing Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it On) or remixing multiple songs together (Girl Talk) or they are taking the beat of a song and making it a different song with that beat or chorus or hook (Nas’s I Know I Can), don’t want to take credit from other artists’ music and claim it as their own. Musicians are 100% entitled to copyrighting their music, but just as it says in the film for what stands for books (23:25), the music, just as with books, “should be free for people to use and reuse as they want”. So much music has been created over time; sometimes it is hard for music not to sound like other music. This produces a controversial controversy, because these artists really could have just come up with music that resembles already created music, but how do we really know if this is the case or not? Famous music artists don’t want to lose their career (and their money) because of illegally using another artist’s music, so they make sure they (or their record labels) have the proper legal ability to use any part of a song. These remixer’s such as Girl Talk aren’t using the music to create something original, but rather just combining music to make mashups of a lot of music from genres, generations, etc. Essentially I guess this is my argument. If the music is being taken to create an original piece and it is taken illegally, then that would hinder creativity. But, if remixers are using the music to make music that is a bunch of songs, hooks, beats, lines, etc. to make a remix that credit is not being taken for and credibility is being awarded, then that is not hindering creativity because this remixer is creatively combining this content into a new context for a new purpose.
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