This week brought up the discussion of copyright laws. I read read a very informative article that was the more logistical side of how copyright works, as well as watching two videos. This week I want to discuss one of the videos however. It was titled “Copyright Criminals” and goes into the different perspectives behind copyrighting in the music industry.

In this day and age the creative process behind modern music is vastly different than that of the past. This change, one could argue started with rap and the popularity of the turntables. If we are to look at some of the most popular rap records they contain tons of compilations that include music from other artists. This brings into play the copyright laws behind music and the battle to give artists the credit and more importantly money they deserve. One of the people interviewed was strongly against the musical process of sampling and thought of it as lazy and wrong. Their are many who share this view, mainly the heads of major music industries and some artists. Fortunately for this demographic the copyright laws currently favor this point of view. They aim at protecting even the smallest portion of audio.

Let’s look on the other side though. Can we say that any sound is 100% original to one specific artist? If we even go back to before the popularity of sampling and mash-ups and look at different rock or country music songs the arrangement of chords are often repeated in several different songs. Does this count as stealing? and who gets the credit for the original sound? In my opinion the progression of any kind of art form or culture in general is the melding of ideas to create new ones. Culture is an evolution and must continue to evolve to fit the times. Allowing this collage of cultural relevance enables old gems to not fall to the wayside and allows them to be incorporated into present day. One of my favorite examples of this is the unexpected mix of the song “It’s a hard knock life” from the musical Annie and using a sample of it in Jay-Z’s song “A hard knock life.” It blends two different worlds together in an unexpected way. The message remains the same though. To get back to the main point. In the video they talk about how the copyright laws aren’t in touch with the present day and the creative process of music. Music has become a musical collage and that should be celebrated. It displays “golden oldies” in an updated fashion, why is that a negative thing? The issue comes in when musicians feel that they haven’t gotten proper recognition but as two DJ’s explain, often times the sounds are so distinct and famous that it is not as if musicians are in danger of being unrecognized for their efforts. If we are going to continue to culturally progress laws of the past need to be examined, especially those involving creativity.