Copyright Law

I honestly felt that the "RiP! A Remix Manifesto" video was pretty bad. It is outdated, entitled, and factually inaccurate. To begin, the DRM issue is no longer relevant. It is not really a thing anymore. It isn't a major point, but it is there. Secondly the entire video comes across as entitled. Artists have a right to make money off of their work, and that is made much more challenging without legitimate copyright law enforcement. Do I feel copyright law has gotten out of hand? Sure. But even their main star character, Girl Talk, goes way too far in my mind. He does not, and should not have the right to just remix those songs and profit from it. It is not fair to those who own the copyrights. As much as he is remixing those songs, they are still distinctly recognizable as direct clips of other people's work, and those people need to be credited for the effort that they put into their own work. He deserves every fine thrown at him. The people in this video make vague claims about art and such being open to everyone, yet are in no way entitled to have access to all of other peoples work the way they seem to think. As for being factually inaccurate, the ayahuasca plant itself was never copyrighted. Some uses of the plant that had long been practiced by indigenous populations were attempted to be patented, and even that was thrown out (Wikipedia). I agree with them on medical patenting though. I feel it is much too stringent, and has caused several issues, a recent major one being the cost of insulin. Something legal process should exist to deal with things like that, or even have governments be able to buy out drug patents and add them to public domain, or something like that. But the problems with medical patenting mostly come from the fact that it can do great public good. I don't care how good a hit new song is, it by no means compares to a new cancer drug.

“Ayahuasca.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 July 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca.