Tentative thesis- As a mash-up artist, Dj Jayhood is not violating the copyright law because although he uses other artist's songs as components to his mixes, his overall product is still original and new.
Though the copyright law has many components and chapters, it's overall purpose is to protect the talent and "original" work of artists so it's not used by others without consent. I use the word original very loosely because these days there are many different definitions of what an original piece of art actually contains when we are discussing different pieces such as movies, music or writing.
As stated in the Maciak reading, no invention this day is so revolutionary that it presents a complete new idea that has never been heard of. All pieces of art are built off of things in the past, taking small chunks of ideas from different places and placing it together to make it your own and create something new. That is the process of mash-ups and that is what those artists are doing by taking small pieces of other songs and mixing them to create their own piece of music.
If mash-ups are a violation of copyright laws then we would have to re-evaluate the music that has been produced over the past years. Many artists in the present use samples from past songs as a chorus or imply it into their song somehow. Are they too stealing from these past artists? A present example would be Jay Z & Kanye West new song named "Otis" which has a sample from the Otis Redding song "Try a little tenderness" that plays throughout the whole song. Since he has passed, the money paid to use this sample goes to the labels.
The purpose for copyright laws is to protect the work of others not for labels to consume more money. Which is why copyright laws need to be reformed to where mash-up artist are allowed to express their creativity because at the end of the day they are not copying anything, just simply adding onto already publicly published work.
Artists like Dj Jayhood who is known for mashing and remixing different songs of all different genres to create a club song can be viewed as violating copyright laws because he uses all these different songs to create his own mix. But in reality it shouldn't be a violation because he is just building on to what was already published to the public which he should have every right to do. Also his purpose for releasing his mix is completely different than the original artist's.
Janet - you have some fantastic ideas here! It seems as though you challenge the definition of "original" and then claim that remixes fall under "original", so make you sure you adequately defend why you don't consider "new" stuff original and "remixes" as original. Perhaps you are arguing that each is original and therefore both should be protected under copyright? Except that you critique copyright for profiting only labels - what about profits for remixers? And how much of an original should be changed to consider it a remix?
ReplyDeleteThank you Liz ! i definitely will incorporate the answer to these questions in my draft!
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