Digital Rights Management

Digital rights management is something that we are going to be hearing a lot more about in the upcoming years. The current system is a complex network that still leaves the door open to who owns what material, and who is allowed to use it. “Good Copy Bad Copy” was a very interesting documentary in which the director examined piracy and digital rights management. What intrigued me the most was how record conglomerates would raise hell anytime a work they copyrighted was being reproduced even if it was non-profit. It seems frivolous to me that a company would pursue individuals who using copyrighted material simply to produce creative works. DJ Magicmouse for instance, who would have thought to use music from the Beatles and mix it with lyrics from Jay Z. Obviously artists are influenced by other artist, and I don’t see any reason why artists can’t use expired works to create new music. I guess this is just another example of money hungry fat cat executives trying to squeeze out every penny possible. With the accessibility of the internet to almost everyone, more and more I believe will see artists borrowing music from other artist. The cycle will never end, and record companies will probably end up spending more money on starting the cases then they ever will receive in a settlement. In the end I think there should be a element of respect for other artists work, but it should be between artists not record companies. If the music industry became regulated by artists and not multi-billion dollars corps, I think the piracy/digital rights management debate would have never existed. If they want to keep spending money trying to protect these works all your going to see is more of this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289546,00.html