We live in an age where anybody with a decent laptop is able to create their own music. This caused a rise not only in the independant and amature production of music, but also the rise in mashups and remixes. For those of you not familiar with the terms “mashup” and “remix”: “mashup” is used commonly to refer to when two or more songs are combined to create a new song; a remix is simply an alternative version of a song, sometimes with different beats or with sounds added to it.
Without the proper permission, both a remix and a mashup can potentially result in various copyright infringements. Once again, we can see the issue in music law with the need to balance the protection of intellectual property with the need allow innovation and creative expression.
As it stands, the policies of most Governments and public organisations leans toward the protection of intellectual property. Even content distributing websites, where the majority of artists use to share their creations, tend to lean towards the protection of intellectual property. This can be seen with Youtube(youtube.com), and more recently with Soundcloud(soundcloud.com). Soundcloud is a relatively new website, and it is a platform by which most artists ( specifically digital) share their music. Soundcloud has recently changed their policy in their user agreement to allow themselves to remove copyrighted material and ban users who infringe copyright It is policies like this which have, and will continue to, hinder the internet’s ability to be a platform for sharing innovations and creative expressions.
