McLeod

I realize this post is suppose to be about copyright laws in the music industry, but I MUST make note of how absolutely disgusted I was while reading Chapter 1: This Gene is Your Gene, in regards to the medical industry.  Between the fact that Myraid Genetics gets paid every time a women gets tested for breast cancer, or at least the particular mutated genes that have been shown to lead to breast cancer (41), and the fact that it took ten years for the WTO to allow for generic drugs to be sent/imported to the third-world countries so desperately in need of them (60), I was quite literally sick to my stomach.  It is beyond a pitiful state of affairs we live in when the rulers of our world would rather make money than help those who truly need it.  Purely contemptible.  


However, though I could continue on about the extreme crimes within the medical field regarding patents and other such laws, the assignment is to look at copyright in the music industry.


Ridiculous seems too light a word for what is happening in the music industry when it comes to  copyright laws.  The entire situation seems to have gotten far out of hand.  This is due mostly it seems to this trend of privatization that McLeod mentions (9).  People are willing to go to file quite obviously frivolous law suits just in the hope of gaining some green.  The consequence to this greed is the devastation of many artists and many dreams. 


What I find most interesting about the entire situation, and what McLeod remarks on here and there, is how this 'sampling' of work is not only "a natural part of being a sentient being (74)," but it has been going on for centuries, not just in music but in all art forms.  McLeod gives dozens of examples throughout this reading of how art is about sharing and swapping ideas, and a general collaboration of a group of like-minded people.  From the already mentioned birthday song to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony being used in many different instances.  The fact is, no idea is wholly original; it is simply not possible.  How could we even begin to creative or imagine or even hypothesize if we didn't have other sources to lean on and glean information from.  How could artists paint without the various sources of information surrounding them, all of which were created by another?  
(*note: the basis of this idea is that there was ONE wholly original idea/thought/story, what have you, and that that led to another and to another and so on*)


McLeod is aware of this logic, he mentions that for the sake of consistency, great artists from the past including William Shakespeare, T.S. Elliot, Bob Dylan, Igor Stravinsky and others would all need to be prosecuted for copyright infringement (79).  This is just a small handful, the list is endless.  


Copyright wasn't a problem until music became a huge corporate industry.  Then, it was all about the money.  Which just isn't what art is about.  As has already been mentioned, copyright was put into our constitution as an incentive for artists and creators, not as a means for ownership over their work (9).  It was meant to motivate people to create and explore for the betterment of the entire society, not as a path to personal gain.  These ideals have been shrouded in a could of legislation however, and I fear they may eventually be completely lost.


The entire concept of art, from visual drawing/painting, to literature, to music, has always been had its roots in this concept of sharing ideas, or what McLeod often calls "the folk-song tradition (14)."  Even the bible was written based on more than a century of hundreds to thousands of tellings.  Any fairy tale you can think of was written down only after being passed along for generations.  As for visual art, cave paintings were certainly not done by one man/woman, but were constantly altered and added to.  We see this same trend, quite clearly after reading McLeod's work, throughout the history of music as well.  


Given these facts, it is senseless that the industry has gotten so caught up in lawsuits over copyright, tying artists up in legislative "red tape."  Nothing of value can come from it all.


I'm not saying that I completely condemn copyright laws, I support the original law/idea set down in the constitution (which McLeod has explained).  I do not however support these laws in the current state, and at this point it may be better to eradicate copyright entirely than to try and continue to alter it.  Regardless, it seems this really comes down to an issue of economic values vs. artistic freedom, and as we all know, money holds the power.