Week 10 – Configurable Culture

I really enjoyed Sinnreich, Latonero, and Gluck’s discussion surrounding today’s common use of existing media products to create mash-ups, remixes, or photoshopped images. It was very interesting to learn about the prevailing attitudes that the public and sample-based musicians have in regards to redesigned or adapted content. While it is no surprise to me that younger individuals are more accepting of the creation of adapted content, I was surprised to read that people would consider this content to be original. In my opinion, people’s generated remixes or mash-ups may have some original aspects but are still based off of someone else’s work and should not be considered as original or novel productions. Something else I found fascinating was how attitudes have changed over time. In the past, it was more common for the public to view altered content as theft of existing work whereas now the public is more supportive of altered content so long as the creators of this content are not profiting from it. Despite the fact that most people are now supportive, there seems to be quite a disconnect between what the public thinks and what musicians think when it comes to acquiring permission to utilize someone’s work. While the public strongly believes that people should always acquire permission in order for their activities to be appropriate, the authors of this article discovered that most musicians don’t even bother to seek permission. In the end, I think that this debate concerning what makes adapted content appropriate versus inappropriate will continue for a long time as many people hold conflicting viewpoints.  

References

Sinnreich, Aram, Latonero, Mark and Gluck, Marissa (2009). Ethics reconfigured: How today’s media consumers evaluate the role of creative reappropriation. Information, Communication & Society 12(8): 1242–1260.

- Alicja