So, much like the other day, my family had a very in depth and heavy conversation/debate regarding the topic of conspiracies. I’m a well-known conspiracy theorist in my family, I mean, what can I say, I like to stir the pot. That being said, I seriously have a problem with the apparent relation between Disney and the American copyright law that exists for intellectual and artistic property. I’m talking about Mickey Mouse of course and the fact that his imaging should’ve been released to the public a long time ago.

I find a lot of issues with the ideas of corporate businesses. It’s one thing to give ownership to someone that is alive, but to remove objects and ideas from the realm of cultural identity is nothing less of absurd. When we discussed the fact that the song ‘Happy Birthday’ was once actually considered under copyright law, I was astounded. To me, personally, the song seems like such an integral part of modern, western culture, that I find it would be absolutely absurd that anyone would own rights to it. The further possibility that it’s possible I’d be charged for my kids singing the song at a birthday party is equally absurd. I absolutely fear the future where the government is spying on us to that extent for the sake of corporations making money under the guise of copyright.

I come from a background of having a lot of experience within the YouTube community. I know that within that community, there’s been problems with copyright for years. Especially the determination between what constitutes and what doesn’t constitute ‘Fair Use’. One of my biggest questions that I didn’t get to ask in class was, ‘Do songs have protection under fair use?’ I mean, if it does, then I don’t think people are protecting themselves well enough from law suits, but if it doesn’t, that’s very, very wrong. Especially considering the diverse, historic nature that seems to follow hip-hop and record/dj mixing. I had no idea that, again, the racial divide that plagues the music industry didn’t really stop back in the 50s like I thought it did. I’m glad that people from poorer background found a relatively cheap way of expressing themselves, but I’m kind of pissed that overarching, governmental authorities would try to shut it down.

I always say that copyright truly is a mixed bag of good and bad. I lean more towards bad, but at the same time, it’s evident to me that obviously it would be wrong for me to be able to just cut off the last two seconds of a song and then just sell it as my own. On the other completely flipped side, people getting sued over really, and I mean really, small matters and a song need to grow up. People trying to own things to that matter and extreme is a form of greed that I can’t support in the slightest. I find that in the past, in the primary time of classical music, people used to find it an honor to have their music featured in another person’s music. It’s evident that the times have changed, and I find it change that makes me sad. Art is made for the sake of human emotion and the epiphany of the features that make us human. I guess it’s evident that our desire to own and subjugate intellectual property is in association with our natural features.

In future reference, I hope to have another blog post towards the idea of crowdsourcing. furthermore, two more on the last two books we’ve had assigned for class, and lastly, a series of blog posts related to my creation of mine own song…I look forward to discussing sampling in my future paper.

PS. All of my text seems to be blacked out on my blog, if you go ahead and highlight over it, you will have the availability to see the words, I’m sorry this has happened, if you need me to send you the specific blog post, let me know.