Last month after the buzz reached a fever pitch, I finally sat down to watch an episode of Glee. I have not watched it since, but I have been thinking about why not. I came across this blog posting, which begins:
The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned. But it does, and week after week, those zany Glee kids rack up the potential to pay higher and higher fines.
Indeed.
I’ve watched enough television to know that sometimes a deliberate distortion of reality is part of a show’s appeal. The Office clearly (and hilariously) offends virtually every HR law on the books, but we’re in on the joke no matter how straight the actors play it. In its day, Ally McBeal did the same thing with courtroom antics. On the opposite side of humor, the TV drama 24 created a “hero” who could always be relied upon to use torture as an excuse to continue to protect a regime that condoned such illegal and reprehensible actions. I never watched 24, but from all the advertising and imagery that surrounded that show, it was pretty clear they knew and the audience knew that the show was stepping over all sorts of legal, ethical, and moral lines, and that was quintessential to the drama. Glee appears to be entirely tone-deaf when it comes to the subject of copyright:
In one recent episode, the AV Club helps cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester film a near-exact copy of Madonna’s Vogue music video (the real-life fine for copying Madonna’s original? up to $150,000). Just a few episodes later, a video of Sue dancing to Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 hit Physical is posted online (damages for recording the entirety of Physical on Sue’s camcorder: up to $300,000). And let’s not forget the glee club’s many mash-ups — songs created by mixing together two other musical pieces. Each mash-up is a “preparation of a derivative work” of the original two songs’ compositions – an action for which there is no compulsory license available, meaning (in plain English) that if the Glee kids were a real group of teenagers, they could not feasibly ask for — or hope to get — the copyright permissions they would need to make their songs, and their actions, legal under copyright law. Punishment for making each mash-up? Up to another $150,000 — times two.
[…]
It’s hard to imagine glee club coach Will Schuester giving his students a tough speech on how they can’t do mash-ups anymore because of copyright law (but if he did, it might make people rethink the law). Instead, copyright violations are rewarded in Glee — after Sue’s Physical video goes viral, Olivia Newton-John contacts Sue so they can film a new, improved video together.
If Glee decides to bring copyright into its storyline, and treat it as intelligently and as sensitively as it attempts to treat other social issues, then perhaps I’ll watch. Until then, no Glee for me.
Manifold Recording / The Miraverse 
Ah, come on man!
This is a show for kids. Every wannabe since the dawn of time has started out by copying their heros. There is no law that says a kid can’t copy madonna’s video at home on their Dad’s camcorder and then play the video to their friends in the schoolyard. And even if this is somehow technically breaking some law, no successful artist would object to this activity on the grounds that if they did they’d be being a big fat killjoy.
Copyright law is there to protect people’s right to ownership and to allow them to make money from their work (ironically it tends to allow lots of “middlemen” to make most of the money). If you want to exploit someone’s work in some way then of course you have to pay them for the privilege. But if you aren’t making money or gaining anything significant, (other than some cred from your mates or something); if you aren’t damaging the earnings or reputation of a copyright holder, then you aren’t doing anything wrong in my book. And as I understand things – anyone else’s book
I am positive that Glee will pay substantial amounts of money to the songwriters and copyright holders it “uses” to make its show.
This subject of copyright is complicated and its true that folk can break copyright law without knowing it. Stuff on youtube etc has brought lots of new problems to the fore and we are all coming to terms with this new distribution world etc. Everyone needs to re-evaluate and artists need to be careful that important rights are not lost just because the playing field has changed.
But equally, lets not criminalise the kids for having fun.
Personally I can’t stand Glee and have only watched bits of it (but then I wouldn’t admit to anything else!).
Perhaps it could be argued that Glee has a role to play in educating kids in music copyright law – but I’d like to see them try and make a good show out that subject!