Disneyland is too far; let’s enjoy it here!

The title of this post comes from a line in the excellent “Rip: A Remix Manifesto”, a movie about copyright laws stifling creativity and freedom of expression.  The line in question is delivered by a man in China who is visiting a ripoff of Disneyland; the characters look the same (although park administrators swear their Mickey is really  a cat with huge ears), and the rides are the same, with slightly altered names (Splashing Mountain!)  When the guy talks about Disneyland being too far away, he’s speaking for all of us who enjoy things that are ripped off: mashup music, pirated video, illegally downloaded songs.  According to the “Rip” folks, it’d cost millions for a mashup artist to gain the rights to all the songs, if the record companies would agree to loan them the rights.  So people rip stuff off illegally, because we want to have access to cool things, but we don’t have millions of dollars and teams of lawyers and tons of time to go to court about it all.  By illegally copying stuff, we are bringing Disneyland to us.

I really do believe that copyright is evil.  However, I know people who don’t think the way I do, and as much as I try to listen to their POV, I don’t think they have a valid argument.  My friend Mark is a musician who’s released a few albums.  His songs get played on the radio sometimes; each time one of his songs gets played, he gets a bit of money.  Every few months, the company contracted to handle these dealings, called ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), bundles together all the bits of money from each radio airplay, and sends Mark a check.  Mark likes getting these checks; without them, he’d be unable to survive on the very modest income from his job as a bookstore clerk.  Mark fiercely believes that copyright laws need to be in place, and if you ask him, he will say that downloading stuff off the internet for free is wrong.  He knows my position on the issue, so he brags to me whenever he buys a CD, claiming that he’s contributing to the arts (don’t tell him CDs are obsolete; Mark’s in his mid-fifties and doesn’t have a cell phone or the internet. I tried explaining mp3s to him once and he just got really confused and changed the subject).  However, even Mark copies music illegally.  He’s burned CDs for me; when I tell him this is illegal copying, he says that if he likes the burned copy, he’ll go out and buy the album (this is far from the truth, fyi).  However, Mark’s situation is a perfect example of why copyright laws can be good.  Should he not be able to make a few hundred dollars a month off his albums?  It helps him survive.  If no one made any money off of music, how would artists make a living?  I don’t want to work at (insert name of corporate coffee megachain here) for the rest of my life to support my art.  How do we solve this?

It being that my politics make Michael Moore look like Glenn Beck, my solution would be a happy socialist utopia where no one is allowed to make superhuge amounts of money; there’s no reason why people need mansions and BMWs while people are starving, and we should take money from rich people and give it to artists (like me!) so they can have food and shelter while devoting their time and energy to their craft.  Some might say that this is a different debate entirely, but is it?  If everything is free, and everything can be ripped off and remixed in the name of art, how will the artists, including the mashup artists, make a living?  Playing live shows means you have to have some way to support yourself while you’re making your name at playing live.  The copyright argument really does get to the heart of capitalist criticism and politics.

I want to hear comments from people reading this.  What do you think the solution is?  Can you come up with something simpler (and more feasible) than my one-track commie mind can fathom?  I want to hear it.  Comments please…