Mcleod

Before reading this article, I had always known that the copyright laws were fairly ridiculous...but wow. Apparently I had no idea how in depth and how many different laws there were. The first law that stuck out to me was the public performance law. I was really taken back that The Girl Scouts are required to have a performance licensee in order to sing songs around the fire. Are you serious??? But then, I read that ASCAP was nice enough to wavier non-profit camps of this fee. Gee, how nice of them...
I just feel like copyright laws like that are so absurd because 1) its extremely difficult to control and 2) The music industry isn't losing any money by letting people sing their songs. I sing songs all the time but that doesn't stop me from buying the song.

It was also sad to read about the sampling laws and how much it affected bands like Public Enemy and Eminem, etc. Sampling is a very important and talented way of making music and it seems like these laws that are making musicians pay thousands of dollars for 20 seconds of a song are restraining the creativity and beauty of several different musicians. For example, I read that Kanye West wanted to use a small sample of a Lauryn Hill song. After searching for the music though, Kanye discovered that he had to pay 150,000 dollars for the 20 seconds of her song (p.91) I agree with Will, (in a few posts below) I feel like it should be about respect. The majority of these artists are not using each other's music and claiming it to be 100% their own. If the artists can respect each other, then what's wrong with a little sharing? After all, sharing is one of the first things we learn in kindergarten.

Overall, I was just amazed at the amount of copyright laws and how specific they can get. Another example, you can quote another book or author in a book, but you can't quote a few lines of lyrics in a book? (p.80). That just doesn't make sense to me. They are both a product of writing. Musicians are authors too. I'll be interested to see where these laws continue to go in the future, thats for sure.