Copyright laws

This week in class, we watched a video over the affects of copyright laws. The video evoked a lot of thought. We had also been talking about the same subject in my Spanish IV class, meaning that I was able to hear many different sides of the issue and how it affects various people. I, personally, don't always buy music on iTunes. Part of me feels like downloading illegally or pirating, takes away too much money from the people who created the things that were meant to be paid for. When there is a band that I really love and want to support, I will not only buy their music on iTunes, but also buy a CD on occasion. The other side of the issue is that music is pretty expensive. $1.30 per song seems expensive to me, especially when considering that I rarely just buy one at a time. I think that companies or websites that are for the purpose of pirating should pay money to the music industry or movie industry. I'm sure that those sites make some money from advertisements on their webpages. I realize that it wouldn't be much, but it may add up when considering how many websites are for pirating.

As far as using other artist's music for mash-ups and collaborations, I am kind of torn. I love artists like Girl Talk and many different mash-ups. But I kind of feel like a situation where a mash-up artist makes more money off of a song that they took from another artist is wrong. This situation seems possible to me, so I believe that the mash-up artist should either pay a percentage of their revenue or some predetermined and reasonable amount of money. The part of the video that had to do with the man who had made a mash-up using Radiohead material was very interesting to me. I thought that Radiohead did a great thing by aiding the man escape fines. I can't remember what they did exactly, but it was a generous thing to do. These are just some of my ideas on the issue. I love the idea of not having to pay for music and movies, but helping out my favorite artists feels really great to me.