Before I had subscribed to Spotify, a music streaming service, I had a fair share in contributing to nonpayment of downloading songs through certain websites and not providing the honorary artists of their monetary payments for their creations. It was only the previous year that Taylor Swift banned her music from being streamed on Apple Music and demanded monetization for her music; from this point, I began to understand the importance of monetizing music, especially for smaller and unknown musicians. Previously, I would have been what the filmed devalues “copyLEFT”, those who strive for a public domain. Through watching RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, I have gained great knowledge and insight into the importance of copyrights as well as the significance of protecting a creation from being misused.
One of the points mentioned is the ability to arrange and mix music using audio clips the arranger’s own clips and other musicians’ music creations. An example is Girl Talk, a musician who creates “new” music through remixing from old songs. On the extreme end, the final arranger may end up as the video mentions, completely different from the original music piece. An interviewee who works for the division of copyrights argue that Girl Talk’s method of creating music cannot be justified by any law because his work is not original nor is it based on the creativity of his own. However, I agree with the film’s latter standing point that music builds from old beats and songs from the past. Nowadays, songs are categorized by genres, mood, and etc. With each categorization, for instance, pop is associated with certain beats. Composers who want to create a pop piece would gravitate towards these beats; generally, they try to compose this piece with beats and melody that listeners could link this piece to being categorized as “pop.” Hence, I like to think that remixing and arranging music is a method of making new music better or fitted to the modern ear. Having one song that belongs to the pop genre is not enough because listeners would not have a variety of choices. Thus, I believe that this culture of remixing old and new music emerged because listeners and music creators desire more than just one or two songs from a category.
A culture that builds on creating different variations of an old song is healthy. However, corporations take advantage of this culture for rebuilding old songs. The film mentions that filmmakers must clear out sample music through for instance Warner Music before it can be legally used in the film. The worst part is that even though Warner Music can sue a filmmaker for illegally using a music piece, the settlement money from the lawsuit is not even partially given to the artist. A movement that should license music creations has turned into a movement in which corporations try to investigate areas that they can obtain revenue retainment from users’ illegal usage of their “property.” Clearly, corporations are not winning in this battle because video-streaming sites like Vimeo, YouTube, or DailyMotion allows music to be streamed (most) freely with a few advertisements in between each video. This doesn’t stop people from developing apps that would block a user from viewing these advertisements. In this case, YouTubers would have the same issue as artists who are trying to monetize their videos. Moreover, there are many YouTubers who strive to be artists or musicians and make videos remixing mashups of popular artists’ creations. Most are not using these music pieces legally. The question is will these big corporations dig through all these music communities who are not using their music legally and file suitcases against them?
One of the most surprising section of the film was on Disney’s dominance over their “Mickey” design. Apparently, no one can draw or use Mickey because all the copyrights of the Mickey design belongs to Walt Disney Corporation. Even daycare centers were not allowed to paint Mickey over their walls. Disney targeted low-income people and even ten year olds for copyright issues over the usage of Mickey. I think this is ridiculous because Walt Disney was a mashup artist who built a name in the industry through mashups yet he will not allow others to simply draw Disney. I think there should be certain exceptions to using his creation. With these corporations putting copyrights on their creations, this means that ideas are not shared. In this digital era, the action of sharing ideas is encouraged yet these corporations are not moving forward to this trend. These corporations have so much power over what artists can create. Thus, I think the lines between protecting an artist’s work and allowing another artist to use that work for creativity purposes should be revisited.