Appropriation is one of those fine lines that seems to be walked across everyday. Being an artist, musician, and student I probably break copyright laws almost every other day. When I am working on a project for school I usually don't think twice about where my material is coming from. I don't stop and say "I wonder if the person who created this Jpeg is going to care if I bastardize it in Photoshop." The same can be said if I am working on a video project. I don't stop and wonder if Paramount pictures is going to be knocking on my door because they saw my video project that had footage from the movie Terminator int it. Its just a certain thing we take for granted and to be honest as art students we are allowed to. As long as we are using copyrighted material for projects and homework we get a free pass from copyright laws. Just don't expect to sell said work of art after you graduate. I find this to be a little unsettling because if I were to use someone else's idea in a paper I would get kicked out of school for plagiarism. Where exactly is the line drawn? What makes an idea/thought written on paper different from an idea/thought created through media?
The first article by Negativeland brought up some interesting points as well. One point I really liked was the idea of theft out of necessity. How is a small time artist/musician expected to get approval and pay copyright fees if they sample hundreds to thousands of clips. The answer is they just simply won't. Music I feel like plays by its own set of rules anyway. DJ and electronic musicians rip off tons of copyrighted material and get away with it, sometimes sampling full on choruses from other songs. However if I were to walk on stage with a rock band and try to pass off the chorus to Hey Jude as my own work I would get my pants sued off. In that aspect I feel like music copyright laws are simply a little biased by genre.
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