Infringement Benefits?

Robbie Wible

12/3/13

Internet Studies

Dr. Stanovsky

Infringement Benefits?

The first time I watched that nerdy guy pumping his fists to such a strange European song, I thought it was one of the funniest videos ever made. While I was in middle school, the video was quickly sweeping the nation. Over and over we watched it in my living room, at my friends houses, and at school. It never occurred to me that Gary Brolsma, the creator of the “Numa Numa” video, was guilty of copyright infringement. Years later, however, I have a very different perspective on the video.

For those who have not see the video, here is the gist of it. The video titled “Numa Numa Dance” was originally posted to the flash video website “newgrounds.com”. The clip is only a minute and thirty-nine seconds long. It shows a nerdy-looking guy in his room dancing and lip-synching a strange European song. The lyrics are Romanian, so American audiences generally only remembered a few notable lines such as “Mai Hi” and “Numa Numa”. The link to the original video is posted below for your viewing pleasure.

 As funny as it is, the “Numa Numa Dance” video is a clear violation of copyright law. As of 2010, the video had been viewed over 830 million times. The original song is titled “Dragostea din tei”. A Moldovan pop group called O-Zone performed it and made it popular in Europe. The song had very little reception in the United States prior to its infamy from the flash video. O-Zone was never paid for the use of their songs. All 830 million views were completely free.  

However, based on my personal experience, I feel that O-Zone benefitted tremendously from the spread of the “Numa Numa Dance” video. When I first watched the video, I was in the 7^th grade. After viewing the video a few times, I went on Itunes and bought the O-Zone single. At that time, it was in the Itunes top 10 most popular songs. Two years later in 2008, Rihanna and T.I. sampled the Numa Numa song in their chart-topping hit “Live your Life”. I bought that song too. The convergence of a Romanian pop song and an American teenager had brought the song to my attention, and therefore generated revenue for O-Zone.

This caused me to wonder about the “benefits” of having a restrictive copyright system in the United States. If Gary Brolsma (Numa Numa creator) had complied with applicable copyright law, I never would have enjoyed the comedy of his creation, the artistic quality of O-Zone’s single, or T.I. and Rihanna’s single “Live your Life”. According to Lessig, current American copyright laws are limiting creators and innovators. Lessig advocates a free culture. He wrote,

A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limit- ing the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a “permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.

I couldn’t agree more with Lawrence Lessig. Convergence culture enriches creativity and innovation in the world. It allows consumers to become a part of the creative process by making their own contributions. Lessig has argued numerous times, “We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us. Freedom is about stopping the past, but we have lost that ideal.”

         In addition to the convergence of ideas, convergence culture has a technological side. The convergence of different mediums in media has occurred slowly over the last few years. In “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide”, Henry Jenkins wrote,  

Once upon a time," Pool explained, "companies that published newspapers, magazines, and books did very little else; their involvement with other media was slight. “Each media had its own distinctive functions and markets, and each was regulated under different regimes, depending on whether its character was centralized or de- centralized, marked by scarcity or plentitude, dominated by news or entertainment, and owned by governmental or private interests. Pool felt that these differences were largely the product of political choices and preserved through habit rather than any essential characteristic of the various technologies. But he did see some communications technologies as supporting more diversity and a greater degree of participation than others: "Freedom is fostered when the means of communication are dispersed, decentralized, and easily available, as are printing presses or microcomputers. Central control is more likely when the means of communication are concentrated, monopolized, and scarce, as are great networks.” Several forces, however, have begun breaking down the walls separating these different media. New media technologies enabled the same content to flow through many different channels and assume many different forms at the point of reception.

Based on my own personal experience, the writing of Lawrence Lessig, the writing of Henry Jenkins, and just plain common sense, I am strongly in favor of a free culture. Without copyright infringement, the “Numa Numa” video would not have been made, and the song never could have reached the level of popularity that it did. A free culture will encourage creativity and innovation in America. It is my sincere desire to see a free culture in America that regularly produces viral internet videos for many years to come.

Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 1-24. Print.

Lessig, Lawrence. "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and The Law To Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity.”. The Penguin Press, n.d. Web. 5 Dec 2013. <http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf>.