The legal limits of creativity explored: Recut Reframe Recycle

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

Danah Boyd points out that the center for social media has released an informative paper entitled Recut Reframe Recycle concerning the boundaries of fair use (fair dealing in Canada) in digital media. Types of use they point out: • Parody and satire • Negative or critical commentary • Positive commentary • Quoting to trigger discussion • ...

Going Down the Tubes: The Illegal-ization of Culture

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

We've all heard the platitude before: today's culture is going down the tubes. In recent history, major conduits for cultural influence have been "talking machines" (radio) and "boob tubes" (TV). More recently we have the rapid increase in influence of the internet (also composed of "tubes" if you listen to ...

Cover this, Hey Ya…

Monday, November 20th, 2006

powered by ODEO Why are music covers and movie remakes so popular? Assuming you can manage to get it out there with all the copyright licensing issues, its much more likely for a new take on an old success to become rapidly popular, so its a much safer investment. The population ...

Network Neutrality = Internet Freedom

Monday, June 12th, 2006

Network neutrality is a really bad name from a marketing perspective if we want to get folks interested in saving the internet. There is no mention of either the internet itself or what is at stake! Let's start calling it the “internet freedom” debate. Folks care of about liberty. Freedom ...

Mashups: from hobby to art form to controversy

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006

An interesting collection of musical mashups is posted online. Mashups are an ever popular form of musical expression albeit mostly illegal as they are derivatives of copyrighted material clearly exceeding the currently accepted boundaries of "fair use". Nonetheless these "bootlegs" have been a growing aspect of musical culture spread by ...