This was the case this sunny Thursday afternoon for "Remixing the Rules: Copyright and Fair Use." The four speakers were Craig Baldwin (Bay Area collage filmmaker), two lawyers from the State Bar of Michigan, and Mark Hosler of Negativland, an experimental band that got into a serious intellectual property mess in the ‘90s. I didn’t catch the entire event since I had just rolled into town, but the discussion centered around intellectual property and copyright law, the issue of measuring intellectual property as a commodity, and how to bring intellectual property laws into happy harmony in the global digital age. Hosler pointed out that with the internet, “We’ll have to accept the fact that you have no control over things the way we’re used to.” The lawyers noted that laws need to differentiate amateur and commercial work, so that a kid making silly videos in his basement can post on Youtube using a major label song and not be sued. On a similar vein, the ridiculous conflict between ASCAP and Girl Scouts over “Happy Birthday” was referenced, too. One of my favorite moments was hearing Hosler express his utter lack of faith in democracy and the legal system while sitting beside two lawyers (who kept their calm quite tactfully by the way). Oh, but also when he noted the irony of the fact that during their lawsuit over of a parody album of the group U2 they managed to land some “pro bono” help.

-Amanda