Good Copy? Bad Copy? or Profit?

From Good Copy Bad Copy, I learned that the music industry is nowhere near what it used to be.  The standards in place today to protect artists and their music in my opinion seem to inhibit the concept of music as a whole. Music is now about money as opposed to the people. I also learned that there is nothing there to classify something as "good" copy or "bad" copy, because legally it will always be bad, but illegally it will always be good, which is the paradox in itself. In the film, it even says that consumers don’t mind paying the money to support the artists; they just download illegally to avoid paying the record labels and companies. Everyone downloads music illegally, it is inevitable- just as Dan Glickman states, but what bad things are the downloaders doing with the content? Distributing it to millions of people who either can’t afford it or just want to listen to it? Making it available for musicians to remix it in new lights and enable the music to touch someone in a different way? If the only person it’s hurting is the record label’s pocket, then why should it be that big of an issue?

The paradox that I think is created through the use of copyrighting music is that music was originally created by these older artists to send a message or change society, and by setting legal standards as to what can be distributed and used in a song is an attempt to hinder the music. What is defined as "good" copy will always be the samples from songs that went through the process of copyrighting by the remixing artist taking it and/or not taking anything from another product in th first place. "Bad" copy will still be "bad" because it is taken from a song in the first place, so the concept of copy essentially never has a good connotation to begin with. These record labels and lawyers say that reusing an original artists’ content is inhibiting creativity, but these remixers are taking a beat or a verse or even one second of a song and not only keeping that musician and their talent alive but remaking it to appeal to the changing digital technology of the times. They are taking parts of already produced work and changing their context and other aspects, creating a new version of the work rather than taking the credit for it. For instance, Danger Mouse took The Beatles and mashed them up with Jay-Z, two opposite genres and opposite generations of music to create something that not only brought The Beatles to this generation, but also re-sparked the true meaning of music- to create something to immerse fans and for them to enjoy. Just as Girl Talk says his purpose of music is to create music to help people, you would think that all musicians would have created their music for the same purpose. Girl Talk literally states that “he would gladly pay royalties to license the samples that he uses” (12:31), but the concept I am having difficulty understanding is why the music industry wants these musicians like Girl Talk to pay in the first place.  The original creators of the songs created music because they had a talent and wanted to share it with the world. If other musicians want to do the same thing with their music and rebuild it in a different way for people to interpret and enjoy it differently, they are still using the original artist’ work to do that. People know that a remix is just that, a remix of an already created work. The music industry and the legal aspect of the issue of piracy and downloading music is profit; who will make money and who will get jipped. Danger Mouse produced one of the most epic albums of 2005, “The Grey Album” and he never made a dime off of it nor released it as a real album (9:55), and he was forced to stop distributing it because none of the content was copyrighted that he used. However, the music was still distributed to the world and still enjoyed and the album is clear that the work is from The Beatles and from Jay-Z. Danger Mouse never tries to take credit for the music nor the beats, he just takes credit for remixing them together to create a brand new product off of two already famous products. Both him and Girl Talk make sure to give full credit to the artist’ music they take; they just don’t have the legal “rights” to use the content before they use it. Regardless of it being illegal to use the music, the remixers will still take them because the idea of remixing is taking already produced content and mixing it with other already produced content to make new content.

Copyrighting hinders this creative ability because it is trying to put a stop to the use of any samples or clips for this purpose. However, it is clear that the industry is trying to protect the original artists from losing their credibility over a song, but just as they say in the film (23:35), any book produced is going to be taken by others and put in other contexts and reused in different ways. “We all understand the context of text: you put the text out there, copyright protects you from somebody competing with you and selling the original text, but it ought to be free for people to use and reuse as they want…those ought to be the norms with film music, graphics”.

De Minimus means that the law isn’t concerned with insignificant offenses (6:34). With N.W.A’s “1000 Miles and Runnin’”, the ideal case was to find de minimus with this song to protect N.W.A because of the tiny use of the piano riff for “Get off Your Ass and Jam”, but courts said it was not de minimus because using the piano riff in a totally recontextualied and modified setting was not creative. Music has been around for centuries, and music was created to be enjoyed, so if they were using 2 seconds of another song to create a sound effect in a more recent song, does that really mean the song was not creative? Does that 2 seconds really define N.W.A’s song?

Lastly, I learned that the concept of filesharing is never going to be stopped and the reason this is an issue goes back to the money as well. Works will be created and distributed amongst other countries illegally, it will not stop because it is free and easy and illegal (3 appealing things to many members of society), but sharing the files is not hurting the actors or producers of the films other than them making less money. The films are still huge hits in box offices and many people still purchase them on DVD regardless of the illegal alternative and just as Girl Talk says that sometimes he still goes and buys CDs, people still go and buy DVD’s of movies. In Nigeria, they say that the pirated copy is the same price as the real one, and that filesharing just makes it possible to share content across countries. The world is supposed to be a globally connected entity and filesharing just enables our worlds to connect in a musical and graphical sense. (33:00)