"Mash Up" your life

Copyright. The words itself seem to explain it all, just a little twist, and it is the right to copy something. Although this is quite self-explanatory from the term itself, I thought I might offer you a definition anyway. According to Doctorow (2008, p. 83) Copyright refers to the “exclusive right to control the copy, performance, adaptation, and general use of a creative work”. As a creator this is understandable to have your creative works be under certain rights, as it is your own intellectual property. However when living in this day and age, an age infused with technology, this “control is now somewhere between fragile and non-existent” (Picker & Randal, 2012). With the creation of p2p file sharing sites and their distribution of mp3 files, movie and TV torrents, an intricate web of sharing is created. It is in this web that the source of the piece tends to be lost, and with that the need to ask permission for it. Thus we see many mash ups being created, with samples of original songs compiled into one massive song. As many people might see this as theft, I see this as innovation.   

 

Source: Brain Pickings (recommended watch: "Steal Like an Artist")

According to Austin Kleon's "Steal like an Artist" (above), “nothing is completely original. All artists’ work builds on what came before. Every new idea is just a remix or a mashup of two previous ideas” (Popova). What mash up artists do is transform the single song and make it fit in within the whole picture of their song, letting it seamlessly flow with all other songs put into it. So long as the individual artists are credited, I believe the DJ or mash up artists is an innovator. In my opinion it’s continuing the life of a piece of art, or in this case a song. Addressing Kleon, it’s “saving what we love from oblivion”(Brain Pickings).

Source: "All day - Girl Talk" Youtube"

There are countless mash ups that I listen to that have songs from years ago. If it weren’t for the mash up, I would not have been exposed to such classics. In my experience, listening to mash ups bring life to songs from the past, and helps them exist again in time today. It is not theft if the original artists are referenced, and it is not theft if it is helping the original artists stay relevant.  

Popova, M “Austin Kleon on Cultivating Creativity in the Digital Age”, date retrieved: 25^th September 2013, http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/27/steal-like-an-artist-austin-kleon/

Doctorow, C. 2008 Context, Tachyon Publications: San Francisco <http://craphound.com/content/Cory_Doctorow_-_Content.pdf>

Picker R, Randal C 2012, “The Yin and Yang of Copyright and Technology”, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 55, No. 1