Copyright: A Mixed Blessing

The chapter “The Copyright Balance and the Weight of DRM” from Gillespie’s book explores the argument that one of the reasons Copyright exists is to define who receives the profits from a certain piece of work. For example, a singer/songwriter would place copyright on his or her work so that he or she would receive credit for it and therefore take in all finances gained. Monetary compensation is said to not be one of the motivations behind the creation of copyright, but since everything is politics nowadays, it is definitely one of the underlying reasons. Who can blame the artists/singers/directors for wanting money and recognition?

Applying this argument to YouTube is slightly difficult for me since I don't use the sight all that often. However, I have tried searching for videos using search tags such as "snookie gets punched in the face" and am unable to find a video clip. Sometimes a thumbnail will appear, but when I click on it there is a message saying the video has been removed due to copyright infringement. MTV and the producers of Jersey Shore clearly don't want their material floating around the internet, free for people to look at. A similar phenomenon has occurred when searching for movie trailer clips or music videos. I'm not sure who monitors the proper and improper sharing of videos on YouTube, but they are doing a very good job of preventing illegal sharing.