Sharing our Ideas

Throughout each century, society’s ideals, norms and cultures have dramatically changed. First information was able to be freely accessed and then copied, next society focused on physical ownership such as owning property and resources, but as we have moved into the 21st century, ownership transferred from physical property to abstract property including ideas, information and patents.  We entered into an age where products and ideas are bought and sold, so copyright laws are put in place to protect people's assets as copying is much cheaper than creating an original. As discussed in Kirby Ferguson's documentary  ' We hate losing what we've got'.  I remember when I was a kid how big of a deal it was if somebody copied your idea, it was even tattle tale worthy.  We have no problem copying if we are the ones doing it but as soon as someone tries to copy an idea, we become very territorial, wanting all the credit for our own cleverness.  What I should have listened to as a child and what we should remember when discussing copyright laws is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  If we are sampling riffs from other songs like artists have done time and time again, it is only because we think it is good, but is that enough? 

Music and movies have always been an ongoing sociological factor throughout history and expresses the mentality, values, and ideas of culture: the reflection of society.  They also reflect a huge amount of existing material as Ferguson discussed that through social evolution we copy, transform, and combine ideas to create new or better ideas. With the advancements in technology, our society has changed, placing creativity and expression in the hands of the everyday consumer, and allowing the sharing of ideas and information to become effortless.  Through downloading, sharing and sampling, editing, music and movies have changed with each decade, becoming more technologically advanced. There are even musicians now who only base their music only on sampling, such as Girl Talk. With the ease that it takes for regular people to create and edit media, it becomes harder for the system to control copyright laws over material on the Internet.  This allows us to create freely accessible cultural commons on websites such as YouTube.  We now have to power to put out our own versions of songs sampled and remixed from others without too much thought to copy right laws.  That being said there is the fear of copyright laws that probably hinder a large portion of the population from playing around with sampling.  We have more power now than we ever did before, if every person was to be sued for the sampling they put out online, then the government would have to go through the effort of locating all of the culprits.

We have come so far with the advancement of technology that it is about time power is given to the people in the form of editing and creating.  All ideas are interwoven anyways so the notion that we cannot take a previously recorded song and mix it with others seems silly.  Musicians and movie producers have been basing ideas on previously invented ideas for years so why should we be hindered from mixing our own ideas and freely distributing them on the Internet?