Bill Harris's Blog with my comment
Week 1: Reading Entry
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| I thought I knew a little something about Copyright until I went through the lessons on Copyright. I then found I knew little about copyright and learn the something. I had seen the “What the Heck is Copyright” before and had a good understanding of its application or so I thought. I had assumed that copyright was there to protect the copyright owner from having his or her intellectual property stolen from them by denial of proceeds due them. In fact as Peter Jaszi says, Copyright exist for one purpose: “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”. He further goes on to say, which makes perfect sense, that Art doesn’t come from nowhere. Cultural progress depends on the ability of artists to make reasonable use of preexisting material and that includes copyrighted material”. How obvious is that! It reminds me of another saying, “There is nothing new under the sun”. |
As I see it, a study of music genres, reveals various genres merging with others from different time periods to create a “new” genre, only to have to revert to another at another time period. Its as though in order to avoid copyright infringement a “mix” of genres are created to create something so called “original”. Adding a sesame seed bun, special sauce, a different type of lettuce, and cooked another way than fried does change what it is…it’s still a burger. But without the original you can’t have the modifications that some people may want.
Even though Mr. Jaszi’s point is well taken, I can’t help but feel that we here in the United States make such a big thing over copyright to protect our money and not the art. Other countries as “Copyright issues, part 1 stresses seem to consider the arts more than the profit made. I believe in one scene a young music producer said that musicians were more interested in getting their popularity up by having their music mixed and played at parties and clubs so they could perform in concerts and make real money.
I now see that copyright does in fact support and protect the Arts (in legal terms) by allowing the use of “somebody else’s copyrighted music, pictures or words without paying or asking permission as long as it benefits society more than it hurts the copyright holder.”
Cartoon obtained from: http://www.michaelgaigg.com/blog/tag/copying/
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