From Jason Hardin’s copyright lecture, I learned a new concept called Fair Use. Fair Use is the public’s rights to use a limited amount of copyrighted information for nonprofit/educational purposes. This helped clear up my question as to why so many small samples of credible information on the Internet are reproduced and displayed on many different sites. As long as the nature of work and purpose of reproduction are backed by good intentions, then people are allowed to fairly use the information.
One of the current copyright issues that is especially prevalent with the technology we possess today is the incorporation of snippets of music in other artist’s songs. Artists such as Girl Talk and Super Mash Bros. have based their whole music career off of literally copying and pasting bits and pieces of songs into one fully developed song. Other artist’s have gone through lawsuits over songs that have melodies that are not identical to their own but too similar for comfort (compare this super bowl ad's song to The White Stripes' Fell in Love with a Girl). In my opinion, I believe the innovative artists such as Girl Talk should be allowed to continue their work as long as they have permission from the artists they copy from. However, artists who produce melodies that are eerily similar to other songs should not receive any type of profit for their song, even if it was accidental. Unless the song was specifically made in tribute of another band, the artist should accept that another artist already designed the given melody before they did and move on.
This work by Chase Blakeley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
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