MCLEOD

Kyle mentioned the song Happy Birthday in his post, but only the fact that it would be public domain in 2030. I wanted to use that instance to show the ridiculousness of the copyright laws regarding music, so hopefully it’s still fair game to use as an example. :)

The reason I had my heart set on using the Happy Birthday example is because it links to a MUCH bigger point, which I’m dying to make.

Ok, so Time Warner owns the Happy Birthday song. Obviously, that ALONE is ridiculous, but that’s not my point. First off, the song itself was derived/inspired from old folk tunes (or as McLeod said, it came about through a process of “borrowing and transformation”). For them to “own” it, which prevents further evolution of the song, is terribly IRONIC. But wait, it gets much worse, and my point is bigger. Did you know that Warner also owns Batman? They own DC Comics, so by extension, they own Batman.

Somehow, they must have forgotten that Batman only exists because he is a remix! The character came about from tinkering (sorry Travis) with other character ideas, like Zorro and The Shadow. There’s more. Batman’s famous enemy, The Joker, was ALSO modeled after another character (from an old B&W film). And, if you really want to nitpick, Zorro was considered a Mexican version of Robin Hood.

So, you have an entire hero genre that basically only continues because older characters are remixed. How freaking crazy is it that Warner is PREVENTING us from doing the very thing that made all their “property” famous in the first place?!? You want ridiculous……….THAT’s ridiculous!

If this stupidity continues, in 50 years we might not have any cool characters or songs. Instead, we can sign up for Warner to direct withdraw from our debit account, every time we watch or listen to one of their precious “properties”. Maybe, we’ll at least still be able to blog about what we experienced (for a small fee).

**Travis was the fella who disliked the word "tinker", right?

Without all these money-grubbing laws, creativity wins, and the evolution of ideas is allowed. Sometimes, GREAT things can evolve (through remixing and tinkering) from mediocre things. To try and stop this process, by preventing the creations from being altered or explored, is just plain stupid.

I came to the conclusion that Time Warner is completely hypocritical as soon as I saw they were bickering over people using "their" Happy Birthday song. It was nice to see McLeod saw this as well. He pointed out some other big hypocrites like Disney, and those involved in privatizing gene research.

I'll be honest........the first time I saw in the syllabus that we'd be discussing copyright, I thought to myself "boring" and "no big deal". After making the connection about Warner getting rich off remixes (and preventing future inspirations and or evolution), I realized this IS pretty scary. The way all these laws are setup seem much more detrimental to creativity and culture than "stealing" someone's intellectual property could ever be.