Something that caught my attention during the first few minutes of the movie was when the illegal downloading of music was mentioned. It reminded me of the ever so famous LimeWire. LimeWire was very popular (even though it gave your computer major viruses ) because it allowed anyone to download music for free and do what they wanted with it. I can see why many people would have a problem with this and why they would consider it to be a copyrights issue. They created it and they would like to have not only recognition for it but complete ownership of it. However, I feel like today, there is less of a problem with that than there was back then. For example, many artists like, Drake, are constantly sampling or remixing beats from the past. Now we have apps like Tidal where you have to pay to listen to music. Or Spotify, where you can decide to listen to music for free but with ads playing ever so often or pay for premium to not have those ads played at all.
It is interesting to hear the differences between a copyright and a copyleft. One represents the past and having original ideas to make profits while the other represents the new and the free exchange of ideas (whether they are new or old). I think this is where moral dilemma steps in. Is it wrong to sample? In my opinion, no. Someone is taking a beat and altering it in their own way, therefore, making it a new and different beat. Is copyright limiting creativity? They stated that copyrights were originally designed for people to create and I agree. However, I do think it has some limitations. For example, the women in the movie said that it depends on the person. I feel like the more famous the person is, the more likely the person remixing the song will have copyright issues. The issue with copyrights seems to deal with profits. This connects back to the past copyrights because they wanted to put out their ideas into the market to gain profits. You are not only making a profit from the original idea but also from the new altered one too. Now copyrights are originally designed for people to create profits. Another issue with copyrights is the fact that the companies are suing and not the artist themselves. When a settlement is reached the money won goes to these companies and not the artist. You can buy music for a small price than what they are suing for. Along with this issue is that they are also suing CHILDREN.
I thought it was amazing that Radio Head left their record label and allowed their fans to pay what they thought was an appropriate amount for their music. It was also amazing that they stepped in and defended a fan that Warner Chappell attempted to sue. This proves that these major companies are the ones looking to make a profit off of their artists.
Although each generation has a different culture and each of those cultures shapes what is seen, a lot of what is seen is repeated but differently. For example, the song Wild Thoughts by DJ Khaled ft. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. The beat used in the song was a similar beat used in Maria Maria by Santana ft. The Product G&B. I thought it was an original beat until people on Instagram showed me it was not. The same can be said not only for music but for fashion and movies as well. Fashion is definitely something that is always repeating. For example, the 90s styles that are reappearing today. You can see denim on denim, track pants, and mom jeans. Ideas about anything are always coming full circle. As both technology and innovations improve so does culture. Culture is always moving forward because of these two things. What I did not think about until I watched was that these large companies are the ones that control and own our culture. When they mentioned this I found it interesting because I thought the ones who controlled our culture were the many individuals in it.
If the information age is all about copying ideas, then wouldn’t that make it difficult to enforce digital copyrights (or any type of copyrights) because the future IS digital? The internet made it possible for people to share information and the amount of information out there now is abundant. Copyrights are outdated and should be updated to fit into today’s digital world in order for them to work. How do they know where the original idea came from? Who was the first person with this idea? People that put their ideas out there in the digital world, should already know that someone else will take it and make it their own. You have people taking pictures and creating memes out of them or photoshopping them into something else. You also have people who make parodies out of movies on YouTube.