Mcleod

I think that the way copyright laws are applied to music is ridiculous. If you think about it people are getting sued all of the time for illegal downloading and sampling and other things, and its not like it really does anything but just make things worse. I understand that musicians need to make money and so do the record companies, but even with all these crazy laws its still going to continue. So I don’t thing they should go all out by making all these strict laws. Also in regards to the article by Mcleod because in the beginning when he talks about the “this gene is your gene” Collins was actually just mutating the song by Guthrie and just applying it to something that he was a part of. The sad part about it is that Guthrie himself based the melody of the song “this land is your land” off of a gospel written and recorded by someone else. Back then the laws must’ve not have been as strict and I doubt copyright laws really existed to the extent of today’s. Another thing I found that was kind of strange was the fact that Time Warner got the rights to Happy Birthday, and when asked to provide proof of those rights they simply denied stating that they did have the rights but they couldn’t show the proof due to the fact that it was confidential. This lead the author to do some researching on his own to find the origin of the song and how it tied back to the company. Interestingly enough he found out that it was derived from yet another song. When the author talks about Public Enemy’s track, “Caught, Can I Get A Witness”, he describes it as a pre-napster track and as I’m a big hip hop fan I guess I never really looked at it like that. If you think about it a lot of the music we hear now is or was at some time a part of another piece of music. Today’s laws make it nearly impossible to not encounter some kind of copyright infringement or allegation just due to the fact that the music industry is kind of at a low because of illegal downloading and what-not so they are going to take any measure to make their money, even if it means going to drastic measures such as lawsuits.