2. Writer & Director of RiP: A Remix Manifesto
› An open source documentary film about legal
and artistic issues in remix culture
› Ultimately a defense and celebration of remix
culture
Founder of Open Source Cinema
› A collaborative filmmaking web site
Web Producer/Board of Directors at
HomelessNation.org
› A social network & support site for Canadian homeless
Project Lead on Web Made Movies for Mozilla
Drumbeat
› An open video lab & production studio
3. Harvard Law School professor featured in
RiP: A Remix Manifesto
Writer of books concerning issues of remix,
particularly art, technology & copyright
› Remix: Marking Art & Commerce Thrive in the
Hybrid Economy, Code: And Other Laws of
Cyberspace Version 2.0, Free Culture: The
Nature & Future of Creativity, The Future of
Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected
World
In Free Culture, he argues:
› For a “free culture” encouraging innovation vs. a
“permission culture” which favors “owners” of
ideas over sharing of ideas
4. Similar concepts with similar artistic ethos
behind them – a somehow transformative
work of another person’s work – but
› “A mashup involves at least two different
sources (neither of them original) and overlaying
them to create a distinct third entity” –Ulresque
› A remix instead revises a singular work with the
possible edition of original material
Girl Talk’s work is a mashup; Dan O’Neill’s
would be more of a remix.
5. There are non-artistic kinds of mashups
too. Map mashups and web application
mashups in which people combine
components of different programs and
tools to accomplish something new:
› Programable Web Mashup Directory
› Google Maps Mashups
6. “The art of hijacking the mainstream media,
corporate advertisers, and the public domain
to get across a message against one-way
communication. Basically, culture jamming is
sabotage of corporate or public property for
political purposes” (Wikihow).
8. Remix creations are bound up in legal &
ethical conversations about art, ideas,
property & licensing. The laws set in place
are often gray at best – difficult to
understand and impossible to interpret and
apply consistently and, as becomes the big
question, fairly.
Copyright is a part of “intellectual property”
law & begs the question: is an idea
something that can and should be owned
and protected like any other form of
property?
9. If a work is in the public domain, it has no copyright
restrictions & is thus free for anyone to use.
What is in public domain can be complicated, but in
general:
› All works published in the U.S. before 1923
› All works published with a copyright notice from 1923
through 1963 without copyright renewal
› All works published without a copyright notice from 1923
through 1977
› All works published without a copyright notice from 1978
through March 1, 1989, and without subsequent
registration within 5 years –Teaching Copyright
Now, anything you publish is automatically under
copyright and will be, by default, for the term of your
life plus 70 years.
› You can, however, “donate” your work to the public
domain through Creative Commons
10. Copyrighted works can potentially be used for remixing purposes
under the law of fair use, designed as a limitation on copyright.
Whether or not someone’s appropriation of another’s work for some
other purpose is “fair use” is determined in courts by these broad
considerations:
› Purpose & character of the use of the copyrighted work
Is it transformative? Is your work the same as the old work or have
you done something with it in a new & different way?
Commercial or non-commercial?
› Nature of the copyrighted work
What kind of work are you remixing – factual vs creative?
› Amount & substantiality of the portion used in relation to
the copyrighted work as a whole
How much is too much?
› Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of
the copyrighted work
Are you addressing a different audience or purpose? Will you
infringe upon the original’s?
But no one case is the same – “Fair Use” might protect the
remixer, or it might protect the remixed object.
11. Myth of Fair Use for education
› Teachers think they can copy at will (ie. Coursepacks &
handouts) because it’s for “educational purposes” - not
necessarily the case. Should protecting intellectual property
prevent teachers from helping their students grow in their own
intellectual pursuits?
› http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/copypol2.htm
Dancing baby case: (Video)
The case will help define the limits of “fair use” in the digital age.
› Prince sued for copyright infringement – what is at stake in this
brief, barely recognizable snippet of his music? Who is being
harmed, and what is being challenged? Is fair use being applied
here?
› The Lenz video was clearly “noncommercial and transformative,”
writes Kwun.
It uses only a small portion of the original song—the whole video is less than
30 seconds long—and there is “no plausible market harm” to Prince
Is fair use only in the eye of the copyright holder?
Other cases: Google book search settlement ; Blog headlines
12. The Copyright Paradox
In Neil Netanel’s recent book Copyright’s
Paradox, he advocates for a copyright
system that puts freedom of expression at
the forefront. He argues that copyright has
been thought of as a property right despite
the fact that it was originally conceived as
a balance designed to encourage original
expression. As a result, freedom of
expression has come into direct conflict
with copyright.
13. In the spirit of RiP: The Remix Manifesto, Jonathan Lethem
proposes in “Ecstasy of Influence” that:
› Any text that has infiltrated the common mind to the extent of
Gone With the Wind or Lolita or Ulysses inexorably joins the
language of culture. A map-turned-to-landscape, it has moved
to a place beyond enclosure or control. The authors and their
heirs should consider the subsequent parodies, refractions,
quotations, and revisions an honor, or at least the price of a rare
success.
› A corporation that has imposed an inescapable notion—Mickey
Mouse, Band-Aid—on the cultural language should pay a similar
price.
› The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of
authors but “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original
expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas
and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair
nor unfortunate.
14. If remixing requires access to copyrighted
materials, what does it mean to acquire
those materials illegally? And to share
them?
BitTorrent
› The program is open-source and legal to
recreate, but what is hosted and downloaded is
not in some places
› Pirate Bay is located in Sweden, where copyright
laws are not the same as in the US – should US
copyright holders be able to prosecute them?
Legal threats & their responses
15. Canada has joined Russia and China as the biggest violators of U.S.
copyright law, according to the U.S.-based International Intellectual
Property Alliance.
› http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/12/tech-copyright.html (Canada)
The United States filed two complaints with the World Trade
Organisation against China over copyright policy and restrictions on
the sale of American films, music and books. The move, which drew
an angry response from Beijing, represents an escalation in the
dispute over the huge trade imbalances between the two
economies.
› http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/apr/11/usnews.china (China)
Should United States control the copyright materials
in other country? Should other countris do what
United States asks about the copyright?
Chinese websites that violates the copyright material of United States:
› http://www.qiyi.com/common/typelist.html?category=%E7%94%B5%E5%BD%B1&key
=%E7%BE%8E%E5%9B%BD (Film)
› http://mp3.sogou.com (Music)
16. Should medical and scientific discoveries
that can benefit mankind be considered
protectable, exclusive intellectual
property?
Patents may hinder the progress of the
medical invention, preventing other people
from adding to ideas to create a new and
better whole.
› Is gene a discovery or an invention?
› Is patent a fair policy for the third world country?
› http://www.calbaptist.edu/dskubik/intl_bio.htm
