Prefacing Interaction
Copyright and Remix in
Online Digital Literature
Jim Barrett
Modern Languages / HUMlab,
Umeå University.

Author is an authority not an identity and it is
constructed through dialogues

Digital Interaction is About
Response
• Anticipating response in the design process
• Compliance with response guides in reception
• Copyright is a response guide
• Digital literature is protected by copyright
• Copyright prefaces a work of digital literature
as a response guide

Types of Copyright Agreements
• End User License Agreement (EULA)
• Creative Commons (CC) Licenses
• Copyright ©
• Automatic copyright under Berne Convention
All creative works are protected under the Berne Convention.
According to the Berne Convention the rights of the author must
be recognized and the work may only be responded to according
to copyright law. Distribution and storage of digital works and the
possibility of remixing are addressed in each of the above…..

Remix is the “transfigurative appropriation of
older materials” or the taking up of materials
from older texts and using it to create
something separate but derived from the
source/s.
(Shusterman, 1995) 154.

Remixing at Three Stages of
Digital Text Production
Author
Source Reception
Literary intertextuality does not sufficiently explain
the active remixing that is part of digital text
reception. Interaction with a digital text, such as
adding words, opening a file or clicking a link,
has the potential to remix already ‘older’
components of the text into ‘new’ combinations.

Older Texts Included in Contemporary Online Digital Texts
Alleph Last Meal Requested Egypt Ftrain Façade Dreamaphage
(Berne) © (Berne) © EULA CC
Flash site Flash site CD-ROM Custom coded Custom Code Flash Site
blog 3D
Afghanistan Revealed. The Egyptian The Bible. 2500 joint
Blade Runner Satellite
Black Eyed. Book of the Conversations. dialog
Lord of the Images.
Death Letter Dead. Death on Newspaper content. behaviors. 27
Rings. Meet the CAT scans
FBI Files. the Nile. Death Wikipedia, Emails, Narrative beats.
Parents. Good Medical
Hitler’s Henchmen Comes as the Song lyrics, Review 32 Global mix
Will Hunting. textbooks.
End,
Made in USA. column from In progressions.
The Hospital
Ambient Egypt:
The Nazis: A Warning Harpers Bazaars 3 Autonomous
Ref. The Records Old
from History. Sounds From Photos, Radio mix-in
Shawshank photographs.
The Peoples Century. Ancient Sources. behaviors.
Broadcasts, Texts
Redemption. Home video
South Central Inside Egyptian Museum by Frank Ford, Five Separate
Texts by Maqapi Voices. Herman Melville, film. Technical
Papyri. Osiris soundtracks.
Jim Hightower,
Selassie, Farid al The Spanish diagrams.
Myth. The Bride Narrative and
John Kenneth
Inquisition.
Din Attar, Amjad Of Abydos visual elements Poetry of Erica
Galbraith, Peter Van
Without Sanctuary,
Hussain Shah, Biographies of from Optic
Sommers, Benjamin Ghersi
Iraq center, Lantos
Franklin, W.B
And Irvine Flinders Petrie, Nerve,
Briefings Halabjah.
Yeats, Jorge Luis
Howard Carter
Saunders. Afghan Women under Borges. Record
and Amelia
Tyranny
Requiem Mass in Eightball,
Of Congress
Edwards. Songs
Amateur video of
D minor (K. 626) Who’s Afraid of
Rodney King beating of Umm Kalthum
by W.A. Mozart. Virginia Wolfe?
by LAPD.
CAT Scans Liechtenstein’s
Modern Room

Last Meal Requested
Can be responded to as an audio visual instrument for
playing, as a historical multimedia document or as a
new media art piece. Depending upon the skill of the
respondent and the contexts of reception the text is as
adaptable as its codes allow it to be.
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A seeming Democracy of Choice is actually an invisible hand –
guiding, shaping and helping.
Alleph by Sakab Bashir (2004)
We don't exercise our copyright protection. (In short, for many
of us the use of © is not done to protect the works from other
artists who wish to use our material). Also, as many appropriation
artists do, I believe rearrangement, remixing, or simply to bring
something into a new context constitutes a work of art (the best
example of which is probably Sherrie Levin's works).
Sachiko Hayashi, e-mail to the author, 23 March 2007

The interpretive response to texts, termed in this
paper ‘Remix’, should be recognized as important
features of digital literacy, but they cannot be isolated
from social and cultural forces such as copyright that
define what texts are and how they are to be
responded to.
Authority is embodied in the preface ’treatments’ which
surround the digital text, such as storage, distribution and
copyright. These prefaces do not necessarily reflect text
possibilities and they construct access to the text.

Jim Barrett
http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com
jim.barrett@humlab.umu.se
http://www.humlab.umu.se/