Radio Personality Ira Flatow is the host of a radio program called Digital Music Sampling is it creativity or is it criminality. He begins by saying that there used to be a distinct line between producers of culture and consumers. Somebody at a network or a production company made the T.V shows, the movies, and produced the music. The average person back then either bought a ticket to watch a movie or bought an album to listen to music. He goes on to add that nowadays digital technologies from Pro Tools to You Tube have made everyone a producer. He says we live in a world of remixes and mash-ups and samples. People are taking other people's work, remaking it into something new. He says that the problem is remixing someone else's work without their permission might be a good way to get sued or a copyright infringement. So when it comes to sampling, the law can be confusing. How much of a sound can you copyright? A musical phrase? A single note? And who are the copyright owners? He begins his interview by asking his digital editor Flora Lichtman, "What is sampling?" She says that its taking a snippet of a song and re purposing it. He next interviews Hank Shockley, president, Shockley Entertainment, co founder and producer, Public Enemy. He obviously supports sampling from his DJ and radio experiences and it propelled him to do more on a commercial level. He also mentions during his interview that corporations are copyright owners not artists like James Brown. Flatow asks Kewbrew McLeod professor department of communication, University of Iowa, co producer, "Copyright Criminals" how important is sampling in pop culture today? He says its a central part of pop culture with the advent of social networking and how a 12- year old who makes mash up videos on You Tube and uploads them. Its almost part DNA of not just youth culture but pop culture generally. He also answers Flatow's question, can you own a sound? Yes! He refers to an influential case, "The Bridgeport case," which basically the court said, "Get a license or do not sample". The interview continues with much debate on an ongoing and continuing issue with sampling.
Plagiarism Blurs Lines
In this article many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed. In this Internet age the concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault. Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy. This coming from educators who study plagiarism. It is a disconnect where this generation has always existed in a world where media and intellectual property don't have the same medium. When a person sits at their computer there are no boundaries a person has unlimited access to just about anything. "Information just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn't seem to have an author," said Teresa Fishman, director for the center for academic integrity at Clemson University. Shockingly, the number who believed that copying from the web constitutes "serious cheating" is declining to 29% on average from 34% in a recent survey earlier in the decade. It looks like that its becoming somewhat more acceptable. Some have argued that writing is difficult, and doing it well takes time and practice.
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