I am saving my thoughts on the Open Source Cinema site for later. I want a bit more time to mess around with the mixing tools they have provided. It took me a while to embed the video here, but the adventure was worthwhile. It lead me to Kaltura, an open source interactive video platform. This will be something exciting to play with. I will most certainly be sharing my experience with it in the next couple of weeks.
I teach about 30 undergrads a semester. The topic of copyright always comes up as we work with pictures, audio and video throughout the semester. In each of the eight sections of this class I have taught in the past two years, there has been at least one student sued by either the RIAA or the MPAA for copyright infringement. That is crazy. I had one student who was sued $400,000. The point here isn’t that they shouldn’t have gotten in trouble. We have copyright laws and they make certain protections to copyright owners. However, it appears to me copyright has greatly over stepped its original intent and is grossly misinterpreted to make criminals out of every day people.
Watching part 1 of this documentary, I can’t help but think of the rave scene in Matrix Reloaded. I worry that it may turn off a certain group of people the message. That group being over a certain age. If so, I would have to remind them that Elvis was going to destroy the moral fiber of this country once and there was a riot at the 1913 premier of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
Whether or not you think this music is original, isn’t the point. Because the rules of this game don’t depend on who made the song. It depends on who owns the copyright. And according to the people who do, sampling, even a note, is grounds for a lawsuit.
I have to give them props for pointing out it is about who owns the copyright. This is probably going to come into play later. We shouldn’t assume the the copyright owner is the creator of the song. If not, what is the true interest behind the copyright owner? Is it to protect artists or their profit motive?
I can hear some people now. “What is wrong with making a profit?” Nothing. Profit is a part of innovation. It isn’t everything though. The problem I have is when the ones making the profit have too much say in market conditions. This is why we generally don’t like monopolies. There is a balance between producers and consumers. The RIAA is fighting tooth and nail against file sharing, when what they should have been doing all along is finding better ways to get music to consumers.
Music in of itself is a hard thing to claim ownership over as well. In most western music, there are 12 notes. Our music is made by combing these notes in different ways with different instruments. Historically, this has led to music that builds on the ideas of others. Don’t believe me?
C Major, G Major, A Minor, F Major.
There. I proved it. Those are four chords that are the basis for song after song. This video I found on YouTube does a better job at displaying this popular chord progression.
The question of originality isn’t as black and white as it first appears to be. Can someone own the copyright to this or any chord progression? How about the types of instruments you use or sounds they make? What is the point where a song sounds different than another? Can we realistically make these types of judgments? I would argue no and I and thinking this documentary is going to agree with me. Or me with it. Either way.
It is also interesting to point out that they are encouraging remixing of the documentary. It is kind of like a wiki for video. I will have to play with that as I continue watching. On to part 2.
edit: You can listen to some of Girl Talk’s music at MySpace.
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