Who Really Owns What?

I think the most interesting question posed by one of the speakers in the video was, "Who really owns what?" That question is truly legitimate because music in today's day and age doesn't ever seem to be the "first of its kind" anymore. Variations of genres of music are so vast and widespread, who's to say an artist was the "original" recording artist? I think the notion of lawsuits and copyright infringements can go too far; I really do. Just because an artist heard a riff and got an inspiration from it doesn't mean the artist stole the music from the original source. The example the video illustrated was a Dr. Dre music video that contained some background music consisting of three notes. Those notes were taken from another hip-hop recording artist's song and remixed to sound almost entirely different. Isn't this idea an act of creativity and inspiration rather than copying and stealing? I believe it is sad that there was a lawsuit resulting from Dr. Dre's video because he was "borderline copyright infringement". I think he heard something that inspired him to be creative with a completely different sounding song entirely. If everyone had the mentality that music is stolen from a simple three notes, I don't think much music could ever be produced because the truth is, any sample of music can sound similar to something else even if the artist was completely ignorant of the other sample. There would be lawsuits for every new piece of music. So, the man's question from the video is completely up in the air. It is very hard to tell who really does own what piece of music.