I See Musicians' Minds!

The LA Times series on youth and entertainment continues to throw up interesting insights. Where kids seem to be having some moral qualms about freely copying material, an academic sees things so much more clearly,

"At my wedding I handed out about 150 mix-CDs," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor at New York University and author of "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity."

"I was freeloading on songs by Louis Armstrong and others, but I think that's why they became musicians in the first place," Vaidhyanathan said. "Music has worth because it lets us communicate in ways we can't manage on our own. But to communicate, we have to be able to share."

I bet his/her classes are popular at NYU because he/she clearly couldn't object to totally plagiarised term papers and exam answers. After all knowledge is expanded by sharing and I think that's what the original thinkers wanted in the first place. Though I note the book retails at $19!