Current copyright law criminalises a lot of speech, art, and social commentary. Remixes, mashups, and digital citations are valuable creative contributions to society, they're not what most people would call "piracy", and yet the law considers them the same. We need debate within the art community about this. Let's get creative about new opportunities for art and industry.
Lawrence Lessig: How Creativity is being strangled by the law, a short presentation
View Lawrence Lessig's elegant presentation of "three stories and an argument" at the annual TED conference. Rising to TED's challenge to give the talk of his life (in 18 mins), the world-renowned lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the "ASCAP cartel" to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you've ever seen.
Remix is the new text
Artists do things with text that would be illegal if they did them with audio or video because copyright law hasn't kept pace with technology. Copyright law was designed in a time where consumers couldn't publish widely and they remixed only in text, a culture before people had access to video and audio editing computers.
The harm of the existing scheme is that it criminalises many types of expression. People are already remixing video and audio to comment on elections, to make new music and video, and it's a worthy contribution.
We should talk about ways to avoid criminalizing popular media, social commentary and potential businesses.
If you want to read more about copyright and its effects on society, see Resources. This Wall Street Journal article is also quite good.
Examples of Remix Culture
There are many thousands (maybe even millions) of photoshoped images made from multiple sources for art and commentary. There are tens of thousands of fan-made music videos. Here are just a few examples of remix culture,
- The Maori Merchant of Venice
- Obama Celebration Video: 'Whatever I Want'
- Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Piece with examples of Remixed Culture
- George W. Bush and Tony Blair: Endless Love (as referenced in the above "How Creativity is being strangled by the law" presentation)
- Anti-Polygraph commentary, a great example of how speech is enhanced by audio/video quoting.
- Radiohead Skeet Spirit
- Wikipedia list of Mashup albums:
- The Grey Album:
THE GREY ALBUM, Danger Mouse & Jay-Z.
Swiftly curtailed by heavy-handed action from EMI's lawyers, the combination of the a cappellas from Jay-Z’s farewell The Black Album and the Beatles' "White Album", superbly disassembled, justified the media hoopla. Most mash-ups and bootlegs have a short shelf life, but this skilfully crafted musical mismatch is a great deal more than just postmodern pranksterism. – Listener Magazine (New Zealand)
- The Grey Album:
