To My CopyrightX Class,
You will recall that only a few hours ago today, we covered the CopyrightX Week 3 Lectures on The Subject Matter of Copyright, including the Lecture on Copyright in Music captioned in the screenshot above. I reckon the full extent of the irony in the current impasse between Sony Music Entertainment (SME), YouTube and our beloved Terry Fisher will become much clearer to you once we cover “Fair Use” in Lecture 9 of the CopyrightX course. To add to the irony, for those of you that had NOT gone through this Week 3 Lecture video, the option of watching it on YouTube is no longer available – thanks to (Sony’s abuse of) copyright.

Although the inclusion in Fisher’s CopyrightX lecture of the Jimi Hendrix classic “Little Wing” and several renditions/covers of this classic may be infringing on Sony’s rights in these works, the question remains: how else could we learn and understand how copyright in music works without using musical works already in existence?
After three weeks of CopyrightX together, I trust that we can all agree that copyright law should function not only to ensure that creators are rewarded with copyright protection but more importantly that it should contribute to the public interest by improving the accumulation and dissemination of information and enhancing creativity and innovation in the economic and cultural development of society.
See you all next week!
Sincerely,
Your CopyrightX Teacher.