Blog Assignment #4

Fair use is a tricky subject. When it comes to music, who gets to use it? And if so, how much can you use? Unfortunately there really isn't a clear answer to these questions. Using samples of copyrighted music can get someone into quite a bit of trouble very quickly. Even for using a few seconds of a song can get someone in a lot of trouble. This is because record labels are continuing to get more greedy by the day. All they care about is the money, how much money a song can get them. Since the introduction of the illegal downloading of music, sales for the music industry have steadily declined. Streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify have helped mitigate this decline in sales but only by a little. Because of this labels are using illegal downloading as an excuse to charge someone up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to make up for the money lost in torrents. I think this is a bad reason to make money. Sure people shouldn't illegally download, but even if you download one song or twenty songs, labels have no right to charge you thousands of dollars for it. I feel that if labels loosened up their grip on copyright for music, and let the usage of samples roam free in the internet, then more creativity could come about from it. Music is all about creative freedom right? If everyone has that in the palm of their hands then maybe we could truly achieve it.