Copy Rights & Wrongs

Copyright laws have always been a tricky thing for me to wrap my head around. I recall when I first heard that the song "Happy Birthday" was a copyrighted commodity, and royalties had to be paid whenever it appeared in television shows or films. Surely we need some form of copyright laws to protect those who earn a living off of their intellectual property, but it seems like a difficult (if not impossible task). Current copyright laws seem to function on a number of arbitrary factors (the years that something can be private domain etc...).

Jenkins and Deuze describe the Internet as a place of "remix" and "remix ability". With forms of participatory media, and the rich web of intertextuality found in web 2.0 media, copyright laws seem nearly impossible to enforce. You Tube videos thrive off of building upon the material of others. 

Hip-hop culture seems to be an early adapter to the more lax approach in copyright laws and it seems to have only enhanced the richness of the genre. The system may have to completely dissolve and restructure before copyright laws can function realistically in this changing digital landscape. As tedious as "case by case" rulings will be in determining copyright infringement, the court systems are built on precedent, and if the systems broken, it needs to be rebuilt.