In line with the discussions of copyright I’ve been having with my friends (who are still, thankfully, my friends), I just found that my cover of Brandi Carlile’s song, “Josephine”, had been taken down from YouTube by Sony. If these copyright laws applied to Shakespeare, no Shakespeare play would be allowed to be performed anywhere without express permission from whoever owns the rights…meaning, whoever had money to track down whoever owns the rights. So, it’s too bad for all of you (private companies, schools, etc) who don’t have money and resources to track down copyright owners – you just will have to make-do with a Shakespeare-less culture.

There’s a lot more to the issue than this, but it’s all I have time for right now. More information in Lawrence Lessig’s book, “Free Culture”, and why copyright law as it exists now is ridiculous. My view? Sure, there should be copyright, but it shouldn’t be as restrictive as it is now – I mean, restricting covers of songs even AFTER attributing credit to the original artist? Come on! Pressing project for the near future: Put all my songs on a Creative Commons license.