course reflection

The film that we watched in class last week raised a lot of good points, but also made many arguments which I did not agree with. While I've been familiar with, and am a big fan of Girl Talk, a lot of the ideas and facts purported in the movie actually made me respect him less as an artist. I disagree with the point that copyrights are too strict in many areas; why shouldn't artists and musicians be able to protect their own works and the profit which they make off of them? I feel like its hard enough for a musician to support him or herself without being able to protect their original songs and make money from them. While I don't think Girl Talk should be stopped from creating his music, I do feel that credit and perhaps even a portion of his profits should go to the artists whose songs he sampled. And while I understand that the filmmaker was more anti big business which can monopolize on music copyrights, i feel like the problem has more to do with the relationship between musician and record label/company than it does the public. The extreme bias of the movie is perhaps what annoyed me the most with the film: record companies being portrayed as giant evil corporations which ruthlessly abuse their powers. People should realize that they are businesses, trying to make money like any other industry. If they just freely allowed people to download music off the internet, no money would be made, including that for the musicians. These record companies are what allow musicians to be so successful, by providing them with producers, equipment, exposure, venues, and connections. They are an important part of the music industry, and its inevitable that certain companies will be dominant like in any other industry. Anyway, enough ranting about areas which i disagreed about. The film made a lot of good points about companies going to extremes to prosecute random average citizens for illegal downloads etc. and was quite informative overall. I just wish it had been presented with less bias, and less of a condescending attitude.