JN201 Week V Blog Forum

Topic I: 1st Amendment, Copyright, Freedom of Expression

1) In case the following post does not make it clear I did not watch the entirety of "RiP! A Remix Manifesto". I simply do not have the time or attention span to watch someone go on about copyright and freedom of expression for an hour and a half. 

That being said I did gather the whole idea of "remix culture" fairly easily since I have grown up in it. I've listened to remixed songs on occasion and I mentioned in an earlier blog am an unabashed reader of fanfiction, which is pretty much a remix of a preexisting work. The idea that "culture always builds on the past" was also an idea that was able to hold my attention before the documentary bored me into a coma. When I am writing I often rely on old stories and myths to create environments or creatures; so I am relying on past stories to write newer ones. Adaptations of books and plays from history probably count as remix culture as well, Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann's modern day adaption of Shakespeare's second most known play is probably a good example*.

2) I cannot speak for any other person's creative process, only my own. I will admit that my first attempts at writing were pretty much bad overt or thinly veiled fanfiction. The only thing is that I did not publish/post them online no... I wrote them in elementary school and once or twice had to read them out loud to the teacher and my classmates. Now fortunately, I was to naive to be embarrassed about it and the only people who really cared were my mum and teacher who then promptly forced me to try to be more creative and original after. 

Now as someone who has read fanfiction or listened to audio plays based on and audiobooks of fanfiction I can safely say that there are a lot of creative people out there who channel that creativity through it or fan art. The legality of fan works is something of a grey area since the fanfiction writers or artists are almost never doing this for profit, unlike actual digital pirates, but the problem of course is that they are still using copyrighted material. Although as this video shows fanfiction and remix culture has possibly been around for centuries, but once copyright became a thing it became a lot more complicated. I personally would not mind fan works of my original creative works if they ever get published or made; and to be fair most creative artists for shows and movies don't seem to mind either. And I don't get why they would, it is effectively free advertising.

3) As someone who is partially intentionally blind to the world outside my own circle I cannot think of any events where someone when "too far" in exercising freedom of speech or the press. I would point to the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi's but that's a can of worms that I'm not really in the mood to open. 

4) In relation to the above, I would have had them all imprisoned for hate speech and encouraging it (or shot for treason since they were explicitly evoking both Nazi Germany (a hostile power) and the Confederacy (literal traitors who killed U.S. soldiers and citizens)). 

Topic II: WikiLeaks

If I say "screw this, I'm outta here" would I loose points?

...

Probably... ugh...

1) I've always found the less I know about WikiLeaks the better. That said, when I do hear about them I've generally gotten them impression that they can be rather irresponsible.

2) They generally don't seem to think through what the leak to the public. Different pieces of information can have different ramifications depending on where they come from and what they relate to.

3) WikiLeaks is pretty much doing what whistleblowers did in the early twentieth century when they revealed what was going on in the meet packing industry. That being said, I feel like there is a bit of a difference when leaking documents from businesses and corporations and leaking government information, which is often classified for very good reasons. Although even still, leaking stuff from the government is also something of a grey area since sometimes something that was supposed to be targeted at potential threats can spill into non-threats. 

4) When it comes to the current state of free speech, freedom of information and freedom of expression/creativity, I see no reason to be immediately alarmed. Most people can still say whatever they want, they're more likely to get flak from other people than the government for it. If the White House leaks are any indication, government transparency (at least for the executive) is probably not a problem. Lastly, most creative artists and content creators are rather friendly towards their fandoms who remix their copyrighted characters and works through fanfiction for fan art, probably because (again) they get free advertising.

Although my intentional limiting of my understanding of topics like this makes me rather narrow minded here.

5) Didn't I just do that above? But here's an example of remix culture at work (two ways!) for you anyway.

*Although I personally hate it.