Blog #2

I think Lessig has some really good points in the passage we read this last weekend. Those points being that the booksellers or publishers as we know of them today, were creating monopolies because of all the so called “Creative Material” that they owned; which in their case was the material from authors that worked hard to create those stories. I found this very interesting because how is what they did there; profiting from material they had no right to other than buying the original from the author and providing a small cut to the original author, different from how re-mixers do things today.

            I guess what I’m saying is yes remixing takes skill, it takes musical genius to mix those songs into something that becomes a new thing all together but in the end the argument is still did they have the right to use that material. Did they create anything themselves other than a sometimes shot in the dark of two songs being mixed together? Then what does the original artist have to see for their hard work. As the video on Friday, Copyright Criminals (2009), brought up with the drummer that most of the remixing population uses “Where is his credit or an acknowledgement of ‘Thank you for your beats’”?

            But bringing back to the text I see how the error then with the booksellers applies to now, as the publishers or music record labels say “The song is my property”. How is the song their property and in this fact I agree with Lessig that these industries don’t care about the author of the piece of music or the book, they care about losing money and staying in control of the material. It’s an overall scheme that the industry runs and it’s disturbing that they get away with what they do on a daily basis and make millions doing so.

 So really shouldn't the right of the song be placed in the Artists hands, or to the band that created the album, what do they see from the album in the long run other than a short “Hey thanks for making us a crap ton of money, here is your % cut”. Where does the line get drawn on copyright is my question, where should the line get drawn for those that had no part in creating the music or book in the profit from the selling of that creative material?