Friday, 6 May 2011
(4) What is DMA
The term "Electric Media" is very important. It keeps things together and connects the arts to the individual. "The Media is the Message". According to Manovich, "New media" is anything that uses this "Electric Media" to get the point across. No matter if it is a dvd, a cd, or some kind of 3d animation, if it uses electricity in some way then it falls into the category of "New Media". Because of the ever changing nature of the media, the ideas also are moving around and copyright is becoming more of an issue. Bob Dylan, a hugely successful musician, stole a quote from a 1958 film called "The Lineup". If a famous musician can take someone else s work and pass it off as their own, then where does that leave the little man? What about the artist GirlTalk? He is sampling the music that he uses, but how is that much different than what Weird Al does? True, Al takes the tune and changes it slightly before completely rewriting the lyrics, but he is still using the original artist's work as a jumping off point. I see no difference between what either is doing as far as copyright infringement (or lack there of) is concerned.
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Weird Al is not infringing copyrights. He gets permission, and the writers of the tunes he parodies get their proper credit and their royalties.
ReplyDeleteDylan is a little bit different case; he comes out of a folk-music tradition that is always borrowing and swapping words and melodies. Eagle-eyed Dylan scholars have found lots and lots of places where Dylan has "borrowed" from novels, poems, movies... but he's not writing novels, poems or movies, but songs, and one line or one turn of phrase is hardly stealing the original work. It seems like fair use to me. He makes something completely new and completely Dylan out of his borrowings.