Copyright laws seem to be very strict in the view of the
public. You hear horror stories about family’s losing everything due to the use
of something that wasn’t legally theirs, such as illegal music downloads. Girl
Talk is a famous mashup artist who is known for his rare style and performance.
Girl Talk makes a living by snipping different parts of songs to create one mega
song and albums. He performs theses song around the world and has a surprisingly
large fan base. With this being said, from the view of the law, what Girl Talk
is doing could be seen as copyright infringement due to the use of other artist
work. The fair use doctrine allows an excuse for the people who are on the
verge of copyright infringement. Fair use is broken down into four parts,
purpose and character, nature of work, amount used, and the effect upon potential
market. Girl talk relied on this doctrine to continue what he was doing.
Transformative use essentially states that the more you creative “transform”
the copyright you are taking, the stronger case you have for fair use. In girl
talks case he transforms the songs completely with different beats, riffs, and
other aspects that were once absent from the song. His work is in jeopardy due
to people higher up finding out about his mashup style. I personally don’t think
that Girl Talk is breaking any copyright laws, due to the short clip use of
songs and the transformability he implies. I think artist look for copyright
cases to make an extra dollar on the upcoming artist.
