The documentary “A Remix Manifesto” was actually really interesting. I’ve been interesting in things like copyright claims for a while and to have a whole documentary basically explain everything was really cool. Since I watch a lot of YouTube videos I feel like this film really caught my attention. YouTube is the Napster of our generation. We share everything on YouTube whether it’s legal or not. We share videos and music that big companies try to stop at all costs. While using YouTube as an example we can see how big business has affected our media consumption. Each YouTube video now has an ad at different points of the video and some content gets taken down if a copyright claim is issued. Much like Napster copyright claims rule the content that we are allowed to see. It got to the point where the creators of YouTube had to sell the company to Google to so that copyright claims wouldn’t cripple the video sharing website.
The fact that these few big companies think that they can control all media consumption is pretty scary especially since the way that US government works in favor of businesses it’s a very real possibility that the entire media sphere can be controlled by one huge business. This is a huge threat to any type of content creator since copyright laws limit almost everything about the artistic process. Although copyright laws were implemented for inventors and content creators it’s turned into a weapon against them. With the trend that copyright laws are going it could be impossible to try to create your own content. In a world where any snippet of a song can be copyrighted it isn’t looking good for anyone who wants to create in the US.
Although the documentary was very light hearted it felt like there wasn’t much someone new into the world of music can do to stand out. With the iron like vice grip that music companies have on “intellectual property”. With the never ending legalese that goes on when fighting these types of claims it’s very difficult as an independent artist or even someone new to completely understand the copyright laws. This stifles all types of creativity in any sense of the word. The documentary talked about how new ideas are created and he made a very good point about the fact that most music made today had influence from elsewhere. And if big companies keep going in this direction it won’t be good for American art.
Another serious problem with copyright claims during the documentary is that they would attack people who wouldn’t be able to pay the ridiculous amount of money they were asking for. These companies would ask for thousands of dollars from people with kids at home and low income. Not to mention the sky high value that they would put on individual songs. Looking back at that time from now it seems like companies were trying to set an example of all those people. They wanted everyone to know that they meant serious business when it came to their “intellectual property”.