This week in San Francisco, there’s an interesting conference being held called Web 2.0. In a week of panel discussions, the future of the internet is being charted among technology and industry leaders. Jeff Veen recalls a discussion of copyright among music industry folks including famous mash-up artist DJ Dangermouse. After a lot of hand-wringing by the record execs, DJ Dangermouse dropped some obvious knowledge:

Mashing is so easy. It takes years to learn how to play the guitar and write your own songs. It takes a few weeks of practice with turntable to make people dance and smile. It takes a few hours to crank out something good with some software. So with such a low barrier to entry, everyone jumps in and starts immediately being creative. I don’t understand why that is illegal.

Jason Calacanis has recorded audio of the talk on his site (and just for kicks, someone should probably mash it over some beats :).