Unit 9: Remixing Culture
Unit Objectives:
- Become acquainted with copyright as a historic, cultural, and economic
- Explore the changing nature of copyright in the context of “Remix Culture” and the “Fifth World”
- Examine their own and others values and paradigms of ownership and authorship of cultural media.
- Evaluate the meanings of real and fake and examine their intersection with personal and cultural identity and authenticity
Example piece of work:
Reflection on piece of work:
The reason why I chose my discussion post as my example piece is because this topic of copyright has been something that my generation has to worry about more than ever now that everything is essentially digital. Getting your hands on any type of produced material is extremely easy. However, not everyone knows what is considered copyright and what isn’t. Even I have to admit there are some instances when I do not know whether I am copyrighting or not. However, despite some of our ignorance of what is considered copyright there is a still a big fear in many of us of possibly breaking the law and being charged with copyright. And it turns out that a lot of what our generation is capable of producing is being hindered due to copyright laws. According to Larry Lessig in the TED talk this is extremely troublesome considering that this generation’s main way of creating is by mashing up different media sources and remixing it into their own unique and creative ways. Essentially it is how this generation is able to express their creativity. For example, I posted a collage of pictures I made through Google image search on the internet, yet the original artist of every picture was not listed on the website, yet someone had to of create these therefore this can be considered a form of copyright. And to keep creativity flowing we need to reconsider the copyright laws, not get rid of them but loosen up the parameters in which allow our generation to keep producing creative material. I totally agree with Lessig believe this is essential to see creative progress in our generation and the upcoming ones. By engaging and responding to the TED Talk I was able to meet a couple of the objectives listed for this unit. To help grasp a better understanding on how these laws are limiting I can wait and see how much progress has been achieved through creativity in the next 5 years.
A photo collage I made using Google image search
Resources: