Changing Perceptions and Engaging With Art

The film Good Copy, Bad Copy, introduced many new ideas about copyright infringement and filesharing that differed from the anti-filesharing propaganda that has been constantly shoved down my throat since the era of limewire and napster. As a child of the 90’s, I remember the thrill of new music albums being placed on the racks of Target and Best Buy every Tuesday and the struggle to wait until I had saved enough money or begged my mom annoyingly enough to get the new Backstreet Boys or Spice Girls cd. Now, music is free flowing. Literally. The Internet has made downloading music quick, easy, and free. The technology has made it easier for DJs and Producers to create new music from samples off the Internet, which has created a dilemma between remixing art to create something new and the battle for ownership over said art. With the rapidly shifting media culture and the generational gap between physically purchasing art and downloading it, it’s difficult to pinpoint where copyright law will be in the next decade.

This film introduced ideas and concepts about copyright creativity, industry, and invention that I may have naively overlooked or was simply ignorant of: the idea that copyright could ultimately inhibit creativity due to how powerful and expansive it has become, the concept that billions of jobs have been shutdown due to copyright infringement, the idea that despite a lack of corporate entities in Brazil many musicians don’t actually make money.

On 22:22 Lawrence Lessig is being interviewed about the importance of Creative Commons, which allows for artists to choose how they want their work to be used and interpreted with the goal of maximizing digital creativity. He argues that What really stood out to me was how he reiterated the idea that copyright could ultimately inhibit creativity due to how powerful and expansive it has become limiting how people engage and participate with art and creative works. What really struck out to me was his comparison to creative work to a book that is constantly being cited by students, academics, journalists, etc., with the purpose of being able to be used and re-used as the engaged reader/ creator wants.

On 34:20 Shira Perlmutter, the Head of Global Legal Policy, says that “the figures show that 7 billions dollars in value has been lost in the music industry in the last 6 years… and thousands of jobs have been cut.”  This particular part in the film shocked me because, though I understand that the music industry has taken a hit from online filesharing and illegal downloading, I had never attributed the loss to be 7 billions of dollars… or to thousands of jobs being lost. I assumed that musicians were taking quite a hit in record sales but hadn’t really imagined that other jobs would be affected. This may have just been naïve or ignorant on my part, as I attribute my affinity towards downloading music as an attack on Sony or Universal, not the thousands of other people who work in the music industry. But I guess it’s really just the music industry food chain, if the musicians are losing money then other jobs along the chain become extinct.

On 43:55, it’s mentioned that the musicians of Tecno Brega in Brazil don’t actually expect to make any money but that the street vendors make the most money. I wonder how much of this can be attributed to it being music that is sampled from other artists or the lack of protection over their art. Would changing copyright laws like creative commons help these musicians to make money? Or does this reflect cultural attitudes and the desire to create out of the love for the music and the clubbing?

I think that these parts of the film resonate with me because they all really pose interesting questions about how music and art could survive without copyright laws. I know it was mentioned in the film that people would stop creating if their work couldn’t be protected. But, I don’t know how true that is. On some level people create and want recognition, but what kind of recognition is enough? For the producers of Tecno Brega, just playing their music at the venues seemed to be what creating their music was all about.

- Joelle