MCLEOD

I feel that today's copyright laws with music are a little ridiculous because there are no clear cut rules that I am able to understand. The reason I say this is that the average person "inappropriately" uses the song wrong and gets sued but if Snoop Dog takes a part of a song his music people are able to back him up and say no this is not what was meant by it. I think that is is ridiculous that celebrities are able to get away with this. I feel that the term rewrite is also used a little too loosely because again the way a person rewrote the song could still get them in trouble because it is too close to the original version. As quote from the reading, I apologize for not getting the page number but the author is quoted saying" If you allow multiple rewrites to occur people will think it is a public domain" I feel this to be true because with all of the rewrites you loose the meaning of the original song. Two examples from this piece are two pretty well know songs that had the same tune but different words. The first was at the beginning of chapter one where it said" This gene is your gene, this gene is my gene", right away we know that the tune he is using is to " This land is your land" which was originally song by Woody Guthrie. Even though the words have changed they are still placed in the right spot to make the tune still sound the same. Another example to this is when Ghostface Killah sings his pot version of Lou Armstrong's version of what a wonderful world. Ghostface thought that he was in the clear when he changed the words to " I see buds that are green, red roses too, I see the blunts for me and you" Again even though the words are changed the flow of the words are still the same. A more recent example that happened this summer was with Katy Perry and the Beach Boys. Katy's summer hit California Girls was almost a mere identical copy when she had P. Diddy say I wish all the girls could be California Girls. This same line was sung in the Beach Boys original song. The reason she got in trouble though was because she did not give credit to the beach boys for using that line. However here again this made headlines but quickly disintegrated because she was a celebrity. Two parts that I found to be very interesting is that in the year 2030 the Happy Birthday song will no longer have a copyright. I could not imagine a different version of the classic song. I realize that congress could continue to expand the copyright but to stop and think that the classic tune could change is something. Another amazing part in the reading was when the girl scouts now have to pay to use songs at camp. I thought this to be a little funny since I thought we were free to sing what we wanted. The reason for this is because it is song at a public place and not in a family circle. The same goes though for the radio stations, yes they can play what they want but they have to pay a certain amount to the music industry to put those songs on the air. Copyright is a very tricky subject and you really do have to be careful with how you use the songs. When downloading some of your songs to the IPod you have to be careful when using other sites other than I Tunes because some are illegal. Copyright can be a little tricky but when taking the right steps and properly citing when you use a song you should be in the clear.