We live in a remix culture. Described by Lawrence Lessig, this society involves the creation of works formulated using existing materials. Technology provides endless opportunities for access to other's creations but can also lead to the ease of illegal use of these creations. With the potential for recreating through technology, Lessig argues that our legal sharing restrictions are too tough. He states in an NPR interview "that a law that is architected around copies might make sense in the world of printing presses, but in a world where we live on the Internet and everything we do produces a copy, . . . it makes no sense to have this federal regulation triggered merely because a copy gets made" (Gross, 2008).
Until now, I'd never heard the term "fair use" or understood what Creative Commons was. I hadn't taken the time to understand media use, but now I've familiarized myself with it, learning primarily about fair use. The fair use law allows for some sharing of copyrighted material. Stated by Richard Stim, "In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and 'transformative' purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work" (2016).
The definition of fair use is not straightforward. Fair use material must be only a small portion or part of the original work. It must be used in certain incidences such as commentary, parody, and education, and must be used for nonprofit reasons. Using Filmora 9, I created the video below to illustrate fair use. I hope others will learn from this video and contribute to our remix culture by implementing it in their creations.
Legal media use is still confusing to me. I look forward to learning more about media use and how remix culture has an impact on me.
References:
Gross, T. (Producer and Host). (2008, December 22). Lawrence Lessig's 'Remix' for the Hybrid Economy [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=98591002 .
Stim, R. (2016, October). What is Fair Use? [Review of the book Getting Permission, by R. Stim]. Retrieved from https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/.
Create-Wallpaper by Jacob White is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
Comments