Copyright

During network media, we have been discussing into depth about copyright laws and how it affects the media industry and cultures, and the cultures opinion. Apart from our media lectures, copyright laws have been a topic that has been in everyone’s mouth recently. Reasons being is that the government are placing new laws on illegal music and video downloading. The new law states that if people who illegally download films and music are caught, there internet will be cut off by there internet provider. Personally I feel that copyright law are old and out dated. The fact that the internet was given to us for free, why should we have to pay for any of its content? I will be discussing this late in my blog. To start off with I will be discussing about copyrights and remix culture.

To start off with, I am going to define the term remix culture. Remix culture was a term used by a man called Lawrence Lessig, he feels that ‘remix culture is the way that our culture evolves,’ for example Amen Break and Dangermouse. In 2004 Dangermouse created an album which was had tracks from the white album (The Beatles) and the Black Album (Jay-Z) to create an album called Grey Album.              

Here a clip of the song 

After this song was released Dangermouse were being enforced by copyrights by the Beatles, as they used their song without there permission. This was a big issue, it was so big that it result in a day called grey Tuesday in February. Grey Tuesday was an online protest for copyright reform. On grey Tuesday websites would post illegal works online, to support the cause.

When searching for this video, I found it very hard to find a video without the music being disabled, due to copyright infringements, as you can see in the image below. 

By the government placing these acts upon music, it has limited what can be re-created and making our culture to be only consumer, whereas we want to be prosumer, as  we want mutate it, play around with it and cut up. 

Here another video of a mashup by RiP : A REMIX MANIFESTO.

 The government are trying to stop illegal downloading by a new act called the Digital Economy Bill.

This is how the bill works;

·         You get 3 strikes

·         After the 3 strikes if it carries on, the offending site is blocked.

But there are many questions about the bill, which concerns me. How is evidence collected?, is it enforceable?, Howe is it financed?, Do they really understand technology? Because if they did they would realise files can be encrypted, so they can be tracked back. And finally if they do criminalize it, would it encourage people to buy the music? I doubt it!!

To an extent I understand were they are coming from, they are losing money through people remixing there songs and downloading them. But we are in an era were that the internet has lead us to be a prosumer and lead our culture to participate more. So things that already exist are going to be remixed and changed. That is just how we are as humans, we find a way to improve things to make things better.