Objectives:

• Become acquainted with copyright as a historic, cultural and economic paradigm and its value and pertinence to creative works.
• Explore the changing nature of copyright in the context of “Remix Culture”
• Examine your own and others values and paradigms of ownership and authorship of cultural media.

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Reflection:

I’ve always been interested in copyright issues and solutions to the many problems that are associated with it.  With that said, I was especially excited to work through this week’s assignment.  Copyright is such a huge issue these days because of all the advanced technologies that people have that make it easy to take anything that is out there and call it their own.  In my discussion I talked about Danger Mouse and the way he used The Beatles and Jay-Z to put together an album that was called his own.  Now him calling this album his own is definitely wrong because he didn’t make the original music.  However, he did make the mix tapes, and some would call that making it his own.  This is where the legal side of things get involved and it gets complicated.  The New York Times wrote an article about this specific case that is actually very interesting to read.

Lessig talks about the two different creative cultures: the RO culture and the RW culture of creativity.  I think Danger Mouse was raised in a different culture than some of the people that see where he went wrong.  Danger Mouse believes he did not do anything wrong and “it was [his] intent to make an art project” (Rimmer, 133).  However, others see exactly where he went wrong.  He just “remixed” two songs from The Beatles and Jay-Z together and called it his own.  The creative process is where these two worlds collide.  “RO culture speaks of professionalism… The other (RW) is fueled by both professionals and amateurs” (Lessig, 84).  The ones who believe Danger Mouse had no creativity and just stole music are a part of the RO culture.  While the ones who see the creativity are a part of the RW culture.

The cover from Danger Mouse’s album has a mix of Jay-Z and The Beatles on the cover, hinting at what the album is: a mix of the two.

Future:

In the future I will still be curious about the copyright laws and what has to happen in order to fix some of the problems with all the technologies.  I will hope that in the future, with more advanced technologies, that we as a society will be able to harness this difficult subject and figure out what has to be done so no artist is taken for granted.

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