Copy left or right?

Remix seems to be a common trend in modern North American society. The most common forms of it that we think of is in music and video with people gaining worldwide popularity from honing their craft, such as Dj Dangermouse and Girl Talk. Passionate debate ensues not on the fact that this behavior is happening, or even that is increasing. The feverish discussion surrounds the topic of legitimacy, is it stealing the work of others or creating something new entirely?

The one side which can identified as those in favor of copyrighting, believe that intellectual material should be protected the same as physical property, with strict ownership laws and restriction of use. On the other side is the ‘copyleft’ believe in less restrictive uses of intellectual property, where open sharing of materials is allowed and even appreciated.

In order to fully understand where I stand on the issue I thought about my uses of creative content. For the most part, my tendencies are not to be on the side of creating new intellectual material, I don’t sing or play and instrument successfully enough for anyone to want to use my material. However as a communications student its possible that one day I come up with an amazing idea at work, like a successful advertising campaign or promotional concept. If the stars align and I come up with something thats genius, I would expect to be the one to profit from my work. As unfortunate as this is going to sound, our capitalist society is profit focused and many of the great intellectual property of our time has been created for the purpose of making money, if one doesn’t stand to profit from his ideas they might no longer exist, some might not put their time and effort into creating genius intellectual property without it.

I suppose the way to get the two sides to coexist surrounds the idea of intent. How does the ‘pirate’ or ‘remixer’ intend to use the intellectual property of others? As Sousa points out, the content should be legally used to display ones creativity and passion, just as cover-bands or a musician with a guitar around a campfire use songs they don’t own. I agree with the laws that stop others from using others intellectual property to profit, in the cases where the profit is averted from the rightful owner.

An example of this is the 'pirate' that leaked the movie ‘The Dark Knight’ before its official release date. The perpetrator has just recently been sentenced for his 2008 crime, and stands to serve two years in prison for attempting to sell the film on counterfeit dvds. Since the sale of these counterfeits takes away from the possible profits of those who own the intellectual property behind the movie then it his punishment seems rational, and I think Lessing would agree. There is no doubt that the current laws are outdated, but the direction and extent of the new laws is still largely unknown territory.