The legal issue of intellectual property and its limitations is something that is explored in RIP: A Remix Manifesto video. It is evident that creating laws to give credit and legal rights to someone’s idea is difficult. How do you define what constitutes as someone’s idea? One of the main points in the video was giving rights to an artist’s music. However, when you examine this issue closely, the artist that created the song needs to give credit to the various people for their inspiration. For example, imagine an individual gets in trouble for downloading Taylor Swift’s, “Love Story” song. In reality, Taylor Swift technically needs to give credit for all her inspiration.
She mentions Romeo and Juliet, who are Shakespearean characters; her music video draws on the medieval period, and she “re-mixes” the ending of the Shakespearean play to a much happier fairy tale ending. If legal issues are going to arise from other people copying her song, then it is also important to remember that every idea is built on the past, and that the artist itself also needs to be held responsible. This is not to say that the artist should not receive credit for their work but rather that we, as Americans, should not tangle our legal system with ideas so much that it limits creativity.
Imagine all of the progress we have made when it comes to cures or treatments for illnesses because doctors, researchers, and other medical professionals drew on the past and in a sense were allowed to “remix.” In this century, we have access to so much information and if we put a lock on it and just allow it to sit there, we are not going to be productive or move forward. I think there should be some kind of balance between giving copyrights and going overboard.
