The unoriginal sin

Upon reading Jon Healey and Richard Cromelin’s “When Copyright Law Meets the ‘Mash-Up’ ” [March 21], I had to scratch my head and wonder why this issue even deserves the ink.

While I will agree most creativity is derivative, a straight lift (my definition of sampling) is something else altogether. Even more appalling is to read Downhill Battle’s Nicholas Reville call “The Grey Album” a “work of art,” a phrase that tends to get thrown about rather carelessly these days. When I think of “works of art,” I envision Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” perhaps Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” or even the Beatles’ “The White Album.” Not only do each of these truly live up to the definition, they were created by skilled artists with original ideas of their own. By contrast, “The Grey Album” and other mash-ups like it are nothing more than cut-and-paste hack jobs slapped together by spineless buffoons with computers.

Copyright laws may be broken, but “creating” something without an original vision of your own is the biggest crime of all.

Shawn Perry

Long Beach