Copyright laws have been put in place to help protect artists who create content and want to protect it from being shared without the artists permission. Most content that is released (Dvds, CDs, iTunes download) is copyright protected to help protect the artists work. These laws are adequate for protecting artists work but they do not allow for the remix culture that is springing up on the internet. The remix culture on YouTube consists of people taking video clips from YouTube and then re-editing the video into a new piece of work. A good example of this is cassetteboy.
The influx of remix videos appearing on YouTube has lead to the creation of Creative Commons licenses that some artists are putting onto their work instead of the standard copyright laws. Creative Commons Licenses allow the artist to protect certain aspects of their work whilst waving away other aspects for the benefit of other artists. For example an artist could not allow their CD to be copied and sold for profit, but they could allow people to use their song in videos that they upload to YouTube. Bellow is a video created by the Creative Commons License company and helps explain how the license works.
I feel that the current trend of content coming under Copyright Laws before it gets given Creative Commons Licenses. This hampers peoples ability to reuse somebody’s work to create something new. I believe that all content create should start off under Creative Commons Licenses, because this will help to encourage more content creation online.
Louis Valder 
I agree with what you are saying, if all content started off under creative commons it would encourage more diverse content as well as make the law less confusing for amateur film makers and remixers.
of course copyright law is still needed for artists, but it has already gotten to te stage were this doesn’t always cut it!