I woud suggest we’re all “owned” to a large extent and we’re completely dependent on each other and on companies (which are owned by “us” human beings) – your comment (directly above) appears to make some sort of sense, but on closer reading it’s a little crazy and wacky with big words thrown in to impress. Plus, I despise the freaky word “copyfight”

I’m not exactly sure why a simple oratory thesis such as this needs to be turned into a rant about copyright (again)

Because the thesis is that reusing cultural tropes in transformational ways is an important part of the nature of creativity, and because copyright can be used as a bludgeon to prevent people from reusing cultural tropes in transformative ways — especially given the historical trends in copyright laws.  The provision in the U.S. Constitution that allows Congress to write IP laws in the first place explicitly states that the intention of such laws is to build a common cultural heritage — a public domain.  But due to the hypercapitalism of the last few decades, corporations are heavily incentivized to treat IP the same way they treat capital goods.  That’s why you have movie studios, record companies, and associated trade groups pushing for more and more restrictive copyright laws — they’re protecting their assets.  It’s the exact same reason Exxon/Mobil etc. pump money into anti-environmental propaganda; taxes on carbon would devalue the proven reserves already owned by oil companies.  Similarly, sane copyright law devalues huge stocks of IP.

Another way to look at it is that media companies and trade groups want to own our common culture the same way that we’re allowed to own cars and bits of furniture.  The copyfight is about preventing that.  If you have a problem with that then you can always just avoid posts like this.

People respect talent. If you lift wholesale, you get no respect. And in this day and age, you steal at your own peril–people find out in minutes, sometimes.

Next up! Fluffy clouds!

I think you’re getting “creating” confused with “creating solely or partially for profit”

I can sit in my car and play Bob Dylan and Lady Gaga songs on a kazoo till the cows come home and I don’t have to pay anybody. I can draw artistic homages to Dali in shaving cream in my bathroom ’till the cows come home and I don’t have to pay nobody no how. 

It’s a sad state of affairs when everything has a price and a barcode slapped on it. The vast majority of artists and musicians in the world are never going to see much (or any) money for the ART they create. People who succeed monetarily in the Arts are the MINORITY. This is the way things really are. The professional Arts are generally controlled and confined by an elite number of “in” members. Most arguments regarding copyright apply to this elite membership alone, not to the Average Joe or Josephine

Copyright shmopyright…just play yer drums and splatter your paint and shaddup…will ya?

People have been claiming that art and culture have been sliding toward mediocrity at least since Aristotle. The technical term for this is “geezing.” The truth is that technologies that can be applied to an art form, will be, and with glorious disregard for legitimacy, originality, or, really, the need to do anything but achieve the desired effect.

What musicians are pissed about is the ready accessibility of this capability to the masses. Just as composers fought recorded music (Sousa notoriously fought the phonograph as a cheapening and dumbing-down of performed music); “real” musicians tried to illegitimize the advent of synthesizers (“music played by computers”); writers were annoyed in the 70s/80s with the advent of word processors (yeah, believe it or not),vinyl DJs were (and continue to be) with the advent of digital DJing — the list goes on and on.

The truth is that this criticism primarily comes from people who have trained hard in an art form mad as hell when technology evolves more accessible (and by definition less exclusive) ways to do what they’ve done.

But that genie never goes back into the bottle, and eventually it becomes the status quo. When was the last time you heard a synthesizer and thought, “What a shame that guy can’t play a real instrument”?

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html 

Again with a copyright reference…will they ever stop?

Obviously I was ruminating philosophically. Albeit in a clumsy way.
It’s kind of a shame that creativity and copyright have become evil twins in many minds. I would assert that it’s possible to create without any thought of being paid and without being covered by some sort of legal hoodoo voodoo

I’m a classically trained pianist, and I get just as much of a kick out of Prometheus Burning’s power noise tracks as I do playing the Rach 2. Formal training is irrelevant given the ease with which today’s musical tools can be self-learned and used to create.

The masses are weary of music being dictated to them from the establishment, they are discovered they can take it and make it their own by limitless means, and they will continue to do it knowing that the only audience they need to please is their own personal ears.

I don’t care if you like my remixes – I like my remixes, they are for me, and they are how I want the music to sound to my ears.

I would argue that Dylan was much more adept at seizing the zeitgeist than anything else.  This may be a controversial statement to many, but his skill level as a musician is quite mediocre, IMHO.  A lot of kids these days that you think do nothing but lift things wholesale probably spent more time learning how to use Reason or Ableton software than Bob spent practicing guitar/harmonica. 

At the very least, musical ‘talent’ is subjective, as is ‘taste’.  You use what tools you have.  Not everything is great, obviously, but just because art doesn’t follow a set paradigm of method doesn’t mean it’s easy or lazy or less inspired.

re: tristan eldritch
The irony of the “slide to mediocrity” argument is that this is precisely what the white album’s famed originality represented: every review I have read suggests the fab four were getting sloppy, putting out vanity pieces, and it would have been a better album if half the tracks were dumped.

I’m not a Luddite, and I love contemporary music, but I think the issues are not as simple as he’s presenting them.  I do sometimes think that too many people are making music today without really learning anything about playing music.

To put it succinctly and with 99% less screaming weirdness and enthusiasm by our curator, we as human beings don’t so much travel through life. Life travels through us. We’re like tumbleweeds, rolling, meandering and picking up cultural things on the way. Language and the way we each talk is directly influenced by others and most importantly by our genetics. Why does the haunting spectre of Steve Jobs have to be inserted into every modern conversation or piece of Internet text?

People are tumbleweeds, with some sponge and fly paper thrown in.