Intellectual Property is an issue that often has double standards, as we don't appreciate our own content being copied, however we too often copy others. No artist wants to create pure musical genius and have it put onto YouTube only to be manipulated and reproduced to the point that when typing in the song name our search results consist of a small boy miming the song, with more views than the original film clip. I believe that YouTube has completely blurred the lines of copyright laws- I mean yes, they do remove a video if it breaches some of the copyright legislation, but what about the other 17 million videos that just fall out of the legislation, however are still using someone elses original content.
On a positive note, online intellectual property sharing does have the ability to recreate the image of an artist and their music. One example includes late 2009- Chris Brown (R&B artist) had been receiving multitudes of negative publicity from the media after assaulting girlfriend of the time and fellow artist, Rihanna. After a young American couple decided to dance down the aisle to Chris Brown's 'Forever' (2008) and share the footage on YouTube the song reached number 1 in the U.S charts over 18 months after it had previously been released.
I believe that as the internet continues to take up more and more of our time per day, and we rely on it for most of our media and file sharing, the term copyright is only going to slip more and more into the distance. Once YouTube or music blogs have a hold of something, they become everyone's work not just the artists'.
True... the internet gets a hold of something and it is out there...like a million gazillion miles out there. If it has been on the web, it is now in the web. I like to take the term 'web' literally, it catches what it is thrown at it and by god it aint moving. We copy, everyone copies...some of the best innovations have been completed on the work of others. "I stand on the shoulders of giants" refers to this notion and it is tried and true saying. Artists produce for themselves and an audience...just sometimes the audience takes something that is great, and makes it amazing, or butchers the life out of it. We create, destroy and innovate new ideas and old ideas everyday. Nice post, it was clear and a good read!
ReplyDeleteNice post em! And I also agree with the above comment, “We create, destroy and innovate new ideas and old ideas everyday.” Although the amazing artistic work may be reused and as you say ‘butchured’ online, I would argue the integrity of the original work is not impacted, instead the copy-cat who is responsible for destroying the original composition is made a fool out of. And I would bet that the two-way dialogue made possible via the online platform, would see the culprit be shunned by other users of the online sphere.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the issues relating to intellectual property often have double standards. I download music almost daily but when people try to copy my work, whether it is university assignments or quote or phrase i get annoyed. Most of the content that is put onto Youtube is breaching copyright. I do not understand how they have gotten away with it for so long but it will defiantly be interesting to find out.
ReplyDeleteI’ll admit I suffer from double standard slightly. I want everything for free (I’ll listen to songs on youtube rather than pay for them) but at the same time I also want to get into an industry where the only source of income is from IP production.
ReplyDeleteHowever in the online world as you mentioned the free distribution of other s IP often has an effect of spreading the word out to other people in public. While this in turn gets more people seeing it for free, there are those individuals who do not suffer from double standards that will go out and purchase the music or movie after watching the pirated version. There are many statistics on sites such as TorrentFreak.com which describe the other benefits that free distribution of media provides for content developers, so maybe this is something that should be considered by developers in the future. After all, in your example of someone else’s video of my stuff getting more views then mine – If you drove a truck of cash to my front door and told me it was because of the other video I would probably stop complaining.
Good post Em.
ReplyDeleteI like how you cover all angles with this post. In-relation to IP i feel as though the laws are some-what outdated. Although, it may not be the fact that they're outdated, it may be the fact that the internet is an uncontrollable medium. Take fergus' analogy for example. Once something is on the web it is stuck there forever.