Once when I bought a CD by a pretty unknown guy I found a very strange sentence in the back of the cover. “Feel free to copy … Because I did“. He was a singer-songwriter and had been influenced by some chords and some lines and remade them into own songs. But I couldn’t tell. I loved his attitude though. I think it is OK to “borrow” things in music, but not to steal. Some sampled hip-hop songs are really fantastic, I will admit that. But there is a line between being influenced and to steal. I will put up two pictures I made to illustrate.
This guy is my latest superhero. I call him “HomerMarioPhantomSpidermanBatmanSupermanHulk”.
But he is not OK. He is just stolen parts from other more famous work, and I would probably get sued.
This guy on the other hand I had like to call the “T-man”. He is made from “HomerMarioPhantomSpidermanBatmanSupermanHulk”, but could you tell if you wouldn’t have seen the previous picture? Obviously not. And “T-man” would be OK, at least in my opinion, even though he is influenced by several other characters. The thing is that he is only influenced by others, not stolen.
The reggae-guy in the “Good Copy Bad Copy” claims that lot of money need to be put down on marketing a band or an artist in order to make them famous. I got one word for him. Basshunter. He became famous without marketing. What you need is a good song and people will listen to your music. And the comparision he is making with Bob Marley’s best selling album and Sean Paul’s and blaming Napster … It’s just weird.
The documentary brings up Nollywood. I really loved this part, especially their attitude towards copyright. They are talking about respectful copyright.
“We don’t want to look at things from a negative angle, we want to approach it from a positive angle and as we go along we remove all form of negativity“.
Greatly spoken. But why doesn’t the big companies in the industry apply the same concept? By trying to change the way they approach the market instead of trying to change the way the market approach them, they would both become stronger and earn more respect. 154 million Nigerians can’t be wrong!
Maybe this article also shows us that the internet is getting too big to handle. Perhaps it’s time to consider some legal changes?
I must say I didn’t really get your opinion about copyright, but I think for you it’s okay to download music and movies.
You have a good point, why don’t the big companies in the industry apply the same concept? They should really think about it. Maybe it’s the way..
By: stju09ju on November 27, 2009
at 7:50 pm
First of all, what a way to illustrate your point. I especially liked the T-Man. ANd no, I wouldn’t be able to tell that he was the homermario… well, number one.
I also agree with you that there has to be some sort of line that you don’t pass in your “influence”; you can’t take an entire song. For example, those hiphop songs you mentioned. Maybe they have a good deal, but I still don’t like the way they take beats from, for example, 50s songs and add their own lyrics (Stand by me, for instance).
By: raan0990 on December 2, 2009
at 3:42 pm