McLeod

McLeod’s article seemed extremely daunting at first, but once I got over the quantity of pages and actually began reading, the pages went quicker than I had expected. The entire collection of pages focuses on McLeod’s dissatisfaction and resentment toward the uses of copyright laws today. I totally agree with his points of frustration because I find the creative process of creating something to be one that should be desired to share with others. I don’t think you should want to be in a band and make music for the girls and money (even though it’s a definite plus,) but rather for the satisfaction of creating art. The same goes for being a painter or someone practicing any other creative outlet.

I watched a video on YouTube of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. giving a long speech to a college in 2002, and what he said resonated with McLeod’s points to a T. Vonnegut points out that if you want a job like his, don’t expect to make loads of money, for it is extremely difficult to be recognized as an author, let alone get paid a lot for it. Instead, he suggests that everyone in the audience create something artistic, whether it be a short story, poem, or drawing. Then he says to rip whatever it is they created into little pieces and drop the pieces into separate trash cans across the town. He states that you will feel greater satisfaction that you have created a piece of art and creativity than you ever could have trying to create something merely for other’s satisfaction, or in many cases, some sort of monetary compensation. That’s not to say it isn’t exciting to show what you’ve created to others; in fact there is great satisfaction in that. However, it should not be the actual reason for you creating something in the first place. This view that the creative process is one that we should want to take part in coincides very closely with McLeod’s view, even though the latter focused more on copyright issues.

Today with the intense copyright laws, I see many musicians being asked about what their views are on the laws, and I can honestly say most of the artists asked that respond by saying that it doesn’t bother them. Many musicians realize that we are currently in a music and creative format revolution, and that everyone has the access to download illegally. The artists know that the actual fans will still buy their actual records and/or singles, and then leaking their songs to people for free will most likely only increase the amount of their listeners. Beyond that, most music sales come from things like concerts and merchandise rather than the actual music itself.

I see that the copyright laws were originally to protect the artist’s best interest, but nowadays with the explosion of peer to peer file sharing, I think that it is time to greatly rethink and reform the copyright laws. Like Lessig said in his Colbert interview, around 70% of kids across the nation already are using illegal file sharing programs. Sure, I believe that Avril Lavigne should have some sort of repercussion for having her song, “Girlfriend,” sound uncannily similar to The Rubino’s 1979 hit, “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” Or even Vanilla Ice for stealing the bass line of Under Pressure and adding it to his mega-hit, “Ice, Ice, Baby,” but where exactly should the cutoff be for when you are borrowing “too much” of someone else’s work. I suppose the complications of the copyright laws are a bit over my head, but there is definitely room for reform as our file sharing ability only increases.

I also really liked Travis’s example of Girl Talk, who is an artist that compiles bits and pieces of popular music, and combines and mashes them together in order to create an entirely new song. Sure, you’d think that through copyright laws that he would need to pay huge for sampling many songs to compile one of his own, but the difference is totally observable, Like he said, every minute of the tracks he produced require lots of hours of work, and the finished project sounds like a brilliant masterpiece of different songs, something incredibly unique. This goes for many other DJ’s across the nation who create something totally different by adding together different songs and musical elements of the past.

Overall, I do indeed share McLeod’s frustration, and feel like there must be huge reform on our current copyright issues in order to keep our music industry from being even more money focused and blood thirsty than it already is. The music executives of the big music companies have already gotten rich enough for far too long, and it is time to recognize that and stop the huge advantage that these massive powers have over us and our creativity.