My Comments for Megan Sample's post

Megan Sample’s Original Post

I had not really taken the time to consider everything that was mentioned in the discussion videos. I think I fall into the generation of our “kids” as the guy in the TED video put it. I grew up remixing and creating my own stuff. I had heard of copyright and just assumed that as long as I was not making any money off of someone else’s work then it was alright. (this is NOT what the current copyright laws state BUT in only really rare cases do companies or ppl sue ppl for using their work without money) This to me seemed like the common sense approach which is clearly not how the law works. I feel that the purpose behind a copyright is so that someone else is not profiting off of your work (that is profiting money or fame).
There is a problem with our current copyright laws. The laws as they are stated now are not enforcing the reason for their creation. They are instead punishing people for trying to be creative and share their creativity with the world. These laws need to be reformed FAST! People in my generation have little to no fear of copyright laws. Part of that reason is because the laws are punishing people for things that we feel should not be punished. For example, remixing someone’s work to get a message across in a different manner. With all the technology at our fingers and all the creative ideas running through our heads, there is no way that a law is going to stop all of us from banning together and sharing our creativity. With that being said a new copyright law system needs to be put into place. We (the younger generation) have no problem giving credit to the ppl whose work we use. We don’t even want to make money off of our work or their work. We just don’t want our hands tied with all these new technologies that we were raised with.
The FAIR USE policy is in place and tries to enforce the common sense behind the copyright laws, yet many people are afraid to use other’s material under the FAIR USE policy because of 2 things: the policy is very vague and the public is not informed on the policy and how to use it properly.
Creative Commons is a great start for this change. Creative Commons allows an artist or producer to copyright their work but also allow others to use it in certain ways. I hope that more people will start to use Creative Commons so that we can continue to work off of one another to build better and different products/ creations.

My response to Megan

@Megan:
     Hey Megan, you do make a lot of sense in your post, and I guess i am kind of the older generation...LOL I have to take a small issue with what you said about taking someone else's music and mixing it to get a message across (or to make a new sound {I am adding this}) should be free. I have stated in other postings that if someone took some music that I wrote and wanted to use it in a remix, I would be flattered, but shouldn't I also be compensated for coming up with the original music? I mean even if they are only using a few seconds of my song, I was the one that came up with that idea. You developed a game for your math class, and knowing what I know about you, you would not have a problem sharing that game, BUT...you should be compensated if someone took that and used it. It was your idea. Can you see the correlation between that and copyright?

All that being said, I do agree that the copyright laws are a little archaic, and they need to be updated to match today's technology. The one thing that concerns me though is that what we implement here in the United States...How will it be enforced elsewhere?