Mcleod

This is ludicrous! Thank God that people today don’t always pay attention to copyright laws, otherwise we wouldn’t have some of the greatest mixes we all love. In other words, I guess you could say, thank God some people so-called “steal”. Music is something that touches the heart of everyone, and every musician/artist is influenced by earlier music. In a court ruling against Public Enemy for not abiding by copyright laws, the author states that “[the judge] found the defendant guilty of copyright infringement and invoked the seventh commandment when suggesting [they] should be subject to criminal prosecution for stealing.” For a judge to find them guilty of “stealing”, then the law would have to find guilty an awful big list of artists who take fragments of other songs and voice clips from people they didn’t get permission from as well. It goes on to say “in order to remain consistent, […] that judge would also need to prosecute [list of eight well known artists], and others, because they too were guilty of blatant theft”. To me, it seems that the people of this country are protesting certain aspects of copyright laws, but the government hasn’t figured it out yet. We just keep breaking the laws because, hey, they can’t arrest ALL of us. It’s like when I was in elementary school. We just started a detention program and we weren’t allowed to do cartwheels at recess (for safety issues). So enough of the students got together and did cartwheels at recess because we hated the rule and, hey, they couldn’t give us ALL detention. Music is something to share and use to create bigger and better things. If our whole society was never allowed to use previous work to create new work, humanity would never evolve. And by the looks of it, laws are heading toward total ridiculousness.

I found many, many things ridiculous with everything that is printed in these chapters. Another being completely horrendous to me when it was stated that patents allowed monopolistic control over business methods. Amazon actually took legal action to have any online business sentenced with copyright infringement and subject to forfeiting money to Amazon if they use a “one-click” option. This is the option that allows any online customer to purchase items off of the internet using only “one click of the mouse”. Amazon even won in court over Barnes&Noble.com because the opposing company was trying to use a one-click option on their website over holiday shopping seasons. It even goes as far as Amazon charging money for any business to use this feature or the smaller business will be sued. What is this world coming to?! To take away the freedom to use what we wish is essentially taking away the privilege of creating. That’s not freedom of expression nor is it creatively productive, and it definitely isn’t democratically “fair”.