The necessary loosening of copywrite laws

The idea of copyright is interesting to say the least. It started as a way of fostering creativity. Setting up advantages for creating intellectual property that would entice people to create it. But now all it seems to do is stifle creativity. In his book Digital Media Ethics, Charles Ess points out that modern media has become “greased” meaning that it is easy to get and transform from one platform to another. Similarly this makes the same media easy to alter and reshape within those different forms of media. Brett Gaylor’s documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto shows how artists can use this to create their own art, specifically in the case of music. Gaylor also points out that no art it completely original and all art is inspired by other art. This is where copyright becomes skewed. Copyright was originally set up to protect the interests of individuals, today the laws have changed so that now copyright laws protect the income of the corporations without regard to the individuals whose material is copyrighted.

This has gotten out of hand. I can understand wanting to get your fair share of your copyrighted material, but when songs such as “Happy Birthday” are still copyrighted a century after being written I think we can safely say that a line has been crossed. These laws have become counter indicative to their original purpose. Instead of supporting creativity they are squashing it. This is especially true for mix up artists who use current copyrighted material. I am not saying it is right or wrong to make money using the work of others, but there should be some sort of provision to protect amateurs who just want to use the music to enhance their art. Unfortunately a lot of the time this goes against laws that are unfairly set up to aid the representatives of the people who copyrighted the material without actually aiding the people who copyrighted the material. This is due to the lobbyists who are pressuring politicians for the sake of their own financial gain. The average person who this actually affects has no lobbyist to push his causes. This should change, and the only way that it can change is by pushing back on the politicians to create sensible copyright laws. As it stands if I were to copyright a jingle today and die tomorrow some entity that I have little to do with would use that jingle for 70 years in whatever way they wanted regardless of what I may have wanted, and that is just not right.