Remix Culture

I have just finished watching two films, one a lecture by lawrence lessig titled "Keeping Culture Free" (here) and a documentary called RiP: Remix Manifesto which follows Girl Talk and Lessig, looking at remix culture around the world (here). Both of these films were immensely interesting and I have learned much more than I had expected to about copyright law and the restrictions it tries to place on the remix and sampling of media. Girl talk, a musician who creates songs by taking small samples of many songs and combining them, has not been able to release an album because of the great risk of being sued by the companies that own the rights to the media he samples. These presentations often focused on the idea that culture always builds upon itself, and restricting artists ability to use the culture they could build on is a hindrance on culture in general. One example that struck me was Disney. RiP: Remix Manifesto used Disney as an example of culture building upon itself because of the way movies like Snow White, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland were all modern remakes of fairy tales. The difference in this case, however, is how Disney copyrighted these works and the characters in them so that nobody could build upon what they had built upon. They also were able to get copyright law extended greatly, so that their exclusive access to these fairy tales would last even longer.