I feel like much of the recent conflict involving copyright issues in the music industry is a little bit outdated. It seems that these very discussions have already taken place in the visual art world almost a hundred years ago. Marcel Duchamp was an avant garde artist in the early 1900s, closely related to the Dadaist movement. In 1917 he submitted his piece, Fountain, to a gallery that swore to accept every piece submitted. It was impossible to get rejected from this art gallery. But Duchamp's Fountain got rejected on the grounds that it couldn't be considered art. It was just a urinal turned 90 degrees and signed. And yet today it is recognized as one of the most influential works in art history.
To Duchamp, it was the idea behind a piece that made it art. And by taking a random object and simply altering the idea behind it, he created an entirely new artistic work. Certainly the original designers of that urinal could try to sue for millions of dollars. But they would NEVER win!
All artists rip ideas off from one another. That's the nature of art. So how is Girl Talk different from Duchamp (besides being far less cool, in my opinion)?
Read more about Duchamp on Wikipedia. He's a cool guy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
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