{"id":10266,"date":"2010-06-09T15:40:20","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T22:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=10266"},"modified":"2010-06-09T15:40:20","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T22:40:20","slug":"the-glee-kids-could-owe-a-million-dollars-in-copyright-liability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=10266","title":{"rendered":"The Glee Kids Could Owe A Million Dollars In Copyright Liability"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Balkinization<\/a>, Christina Mulligan points out that the characters in “Glee” violate copyright law left and right:<\/p>\n

The absence of any mention of copyright law in Glee <\/em>illustrates a painful tension in American culture. While copyright holders assert that copyright violators are \u201cstealing\u201d their \u201cproperty,\u201d people everywhere are remixing and recreating artistic works for the very same reasons the Glee kids do \u2014 to learn about themselves, to become better musicians, to build relationships with friends, and to pay homage to the artists who came before them. Glee<\/em>\u2019s protagonists \u2014 and the writers who created them \u2014 see so little wrong with this behavior that the word \u2018copyright\u2019 is never even uttered.<\/p>\n

You might be tempted to assume that this tension isn\u2019t a big deal because copyright holders won\u2019t go after creative kids or amateurs. But they do: In the 1990s, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) asked members of the American Camping Association, including Girl Scout troops,to pay royalties for singing copyrighted songs at camp. In 2004, the Beatles\u2019 copyright holders tried to prevent the release of The Grey Album \u2013 a mash-up of Jay-Z\u2019s Black Album and the Beatles\u2019 White Album \u2014 and only gave up after massive civil disobedience resulted in the album\u2019s widespread distribution. Copyright holders even routinely demand that YouTube remove videos of kids dancing to popular music. While few copyright cases go to trial, copyright holders like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) don\u2019t hesitate to seek stratospheric damage awards when they do, as in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset filesharing case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m too lazy to reproduce all the links in the above-quoted paragraph, so go to the original post<\/a> to see the links. And also to, y’know, read the entire post. :-)<\/p>\n

Current law favors copyright holders. But morally, there\u2019s nothing wrong with singing your heart out. Remixing isn\u2019t stealing, and copyright isn\u2019t property. Copyright is a privilege \u2014 actually six specific privileges \u2014 granted by the government. Back in 1834, the Supreme Court decided in Wheaton v. Peters that copyrights weren\u2019t \u201cproperty\u201d in the traditional sense of the word, but rather entitlements the government chose to create for instrumental reasons. The scope and nature of copyright protection are policy choices \u2014 choices that have grown to favor the interests of established, rent-seeking businesses instead of the public in general.<\/p>\n

The Constitution allows Congress to pass copyright laws to \u201cpromote the progress of science\u201d \u2014 a word often used in the 18th century to mean \u201cknowledge\u201d. The stated purpose of the original 1790 copyright statute was to encourage learning. So you tell me \u2014 what promotes knowledge and learning: letting people rearrange music and learn to use a video camera, or threatening new artists with $150,000 fines?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Balkinization, Christina Mulligan points out that the characters in “Glee” violate copyright law left and right: The absence of any mention of copyright law in Glee illustrates a painful tension in American culture. While copyright holders assert that copyright … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech-censorship-copyright-law-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}