Mcleod

I was never really that educated about copyright laws even though I teach dance and am always finding new songs that have been remixed to something totally different than its original. In fact, one of the examples from the “Copyright Criminals” chapter is actually a song that I did a tap dance to about 12 years ago. It was “The Flying Saucer” song by Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman. I guess at the time I didn’t even notice that it was all samples of several different songs and news commentary put together. I think laws against sampling have become a bit out of control. To me, it takes away from freedom of expression. Yes, someone else composed that particular song, but there is a fine line between totally copying a song and just using an excerpt from it. It’s just like in dance, the first tapper to do a shuffle and come up with the name did not say, “Oh no one else can use that in a dance ever.” Today, I use a shuffle countless times before the dance is even over.

After reading about the DMCA law that was passed in 1988, I was like huh? Who knew there was a law that said you can’t copy CD’s and DVD’s? When I read a little further, Mcleod said exactly what I was thinking, have you surfed the internet lately? This law is stupid. I guess 1988 was clearly before the Internet was so established so they probably could not have predicted this, but still, there will always be people trying to make a buck by distributing digital media illegally. Today’s technology allows this too. Computers come with built in CD burners and all you have to do is import the CD into your music library. It’s that easy!