Remix - Kelly Barnes

The reading started out with the author explaining a scenario that took place years ago on YouTube. A mother posted a video of her son dancing to a Prince song for her friends and family to see, but the video went unexpectedly viral. However, when it went viral, Prince and companies working for Prince filed a copyright infringement lawsuit and the mother had to take the video off of the video sharing platform. Most people would think this was an awful thing, the mother just wanted to share a video of her son. However, for the video to be a violation of copyright, the mother must have made some sort of monetary gain off of the video that she was not subject to. She did not have an agreement with Prince or his management to make money off of her video, so that would be a violation of copyright - regardless of the terrible quality or the medium in which it was presented. The reading goes on to give more examples of remixes in the past and their relationship with copyright, such as the John Lennon fans singing along to his songs exhibit in London. The reading also makes the claim that "we are living in a remix culture" and it isn't necessarily a bad thing because "ideas impact everything." Everything inspires everything, which leads to new ideas. I think everyone has the right to create remixes, as long as they know the rules and the laws to copyright.