Rebecca McKenney
Information Ethics
Doctor Yaw
27 April 2018
Is Remixing Fair Use?
In today’s world, it can be difficult to create something original without borrowing from someone else’s ideas. One of the ways that people combine originality and previously published works is through mashups or remixing. Even though some of these works are protected under copyright, do we still have the right to use this pervious material to create something new? In order to determine the answer, we must first look the definitions of intellectual property, copyright, and the public domain. If one has the blessing of succeeding in publishing something original, they are granted intellectual property rights. Richard A. Spinello, author of Cyberethics, defines intellectual property as “original musical compositions, poems, novels, inventions, product formulas,” et cetera (Spinello). The person who created a published worked hard in order to be published, and should be allowed to profit from their work should they choose so. If an author decides to protect his or her work through copyright, then they protect their work for a limited amount of time. According to the Cornell University Library, works that have been published after the year 2002 are …show more content…
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website, fair use is “a legal doctrine that portions of copyrighted materials may be used without permission of the copyright owner provided the use is fair and reasonable, does not substantially impair the value of the materials, and does not curtail the profits reasonably expected by the owner” (Fair Use). Kembrew McKeod comments in the documentary Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property that “The reason why the public domain is important is because it creates this pool of culture resources…and you don’t have to ask for persmisson. You don’t have to pay anything, you just do it”
Information Ethics
Doctor Yaw
27 April 2018
Is Remixing Fair Use?
In today’s world, it can be difficult to create something original without borrowing from someone else’s ideas. One of the ways that people combine originality and previously published works is through mashups or remixing. Even though some of these works are protected under copyright, do we still have the right to use this pervious material to create something new? In order to determine the answer, we must first look the definitions of intellectual property, copyright, and the public domain. If one has the blessing of succeeding in publishing something original, they are granted intellectual property rights. Richard A. Spinello, author of Cyberethics, defines intellectual property as “original musical compositions, poems, novels, inventions, product formulas,” et cetera (Spinello). The person who created a published worked hard in order to be published, and should be allowed to profit from their work should they choose so. If an author decides to protect his or her work through copyright, then they protect their work for a limited amount of time. According to the Cornell University Library, works that have been published after the year 2002 are …show more content…
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website, fair use is “a legal doctrine that portions of copyrighted materials may be used without permission of the copyright owner provided the use is fair and reasonable, does not substantially impair the value of the materials, and does not curtail the profits reasonably expected by the owner” (Fair Use). Kembrew McKeod comments in the documentary Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property that “The reason why the public domain is important is because it creates this pool of culture resources…and you don’t have to ask for persmisson. You don’t have to pay anything, you just do it”