Grind Time

I myself may be guilty of downloading illegal music. Does that make me a criminal? During my early teenage years LimeWire was the Napster of my generation. Every kid at school downloaded music content and listened to their playlists without the feeling of committing a crime. I knew that a few large corporations like Viacom and Disney owned 90% of media in America. What I didn’t know was that they owned 10% of everything else. I was surprised that you had to pay royalties in order to sing happy birthday. I am a finance major and I understand that businesses need to make money. But this is what people in finance call “corporate greed.” It was interesting to see how a biomedical engineer was a nighttime music mixer and appealed to the youth. It is bad that these companies controlled what we listened too and how we listened to them, but what is worse is that the government is on their side. Corporate lobbyists bribe these elected officials and in return they acquire more control over the media. That limits musicians and artists to create something original. That could slowly kill any imagination for aspiring artists because they will have the mindset that if they create this new art they will either be sued or shut down. The director Gaylor brought up a good point when he says the music artists that created the songs aren’t suing the people; it is their record companies. I think it’s so stupid when they were suing struggling lower middle class parents over 24 downloaded songs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. What is even more absurd is that civil and or federal judges are not only taking their time to listen to this but they are also finding the defendants guilty for piracy. And when the day care had to remove the Disney characters that are just straight up totalitarianism. It doesn’t matter if you own it, the owners of the day care painted the murals for the kids not to profit from Mickey Mouse. I personally believe that as good as this movie is, you can have a million more produced that will spark more controversy, but these big companies have more money and power to win. That is unfortunately the way it is. However, I am very interested how this director was able to create this movie. It pretty much exposed many flaws in our media system in this country. Maybe people like him can give us hope for the future. But like Gaylor said in his 3rd point, “Our future is becoming less free.” There is an illusion of free choice that is blanketed by celebrities and award shows that make citizens believe we put them up there under the spotlight. When it really was the puppet masters behind the curtains. It is a little different now though. In 2015 we have access to all the music we want either through streaming Pandora, spotify to share music through sound cloud or Google play music. So we have access to music but there are still patents on the intellectual property. Are these big companies finally realizing that being less greedy will get them more fans? Or are they somehow working on something that can indefinitely control us forever?