This document discusses Lawrence Lessig's views on intellectual property law and how new technologies have historically been seen as "pirating" existing cultural works. It provides examples throughout history of technologies like the player piano, radio, and VCR that were initially seen as enabling piracy but later were regulated and the law adapted to them. The document discusses DJ Danger Mouse's remix album combining songs from the Beatles and Jay-Z albums and whether such remixes should be considered illegal or if the law should change to accommodate new technologies and cultural mixing enabled by those technologies. It provides several other examples of popular remixes and mashups and questions around who owns the cultural works involved.

1. WRA 150: Lessig, Owning
Culture, and Mashing stuff up
by Phill “DJ FunkyPowerPointz” Alexander

2. A quick lead-in: Lessig on IP law
• Lessig declares that he has the following
position:
–He is anti-piracy
–He is anti-war (meaning law vs. creators
here)
–He is anti-lawyer and anti-lobbyist (he
includes himself here, so he’s anti-Lessig,
too)

3. Lessig video here (if you’d like to watch
later)

4. Lessig is like,
• “We need to hear less from lawyers and
lobbyists and more from artists [about who
owns culture].”
• " This is a relationship
between technology
and ownership,
which is translated
to digital technology
and copyright.”

5. Pirate Technologies
player piano – “pirated” sheet music
radio– “pirated” records
cable TV– “pirated” network TV
betamax– “pirated” TV and movies
But as these were regulated, the law
always waited to see “the potential
of the technology.”

6. We Didn’t Start the Fire…
• “...this is not the first time radical new
technologies have appeared and changed the
way that culture gets made and distributed.
This is a constant theme...”
• But… The law favored the pirate in those old
cases. It is now "fit the technology
to the law" and not "fit the law to
the technology."

7. "This architecture demands... the right to
remix culture."
Enter DJ Danger Mouse. He felt that the Beatles’
White Album and Jay-Z’s black album went together.
So he created
“the Grey Album”
which you can DL here:
http://www.illegal-art.
org/audio/grey.html
but don’t, because it’s
totally illegal. *wink*
Or is it?
Or… should it be?

8. Remix
Remix
Remix is the act of taking one or more cultural
artifacts-- in this case visual, though video,
audio, and alphabetic texts are regularly
remixed-- and deliberately mixing elements
together to create something new that often
specifically mimics one or more of the sources.
Many remixes are meant to be satirical or
overtly political, though satire is not essential to
the genre.
Remix is the act of taking one or more cultural
artifacts-- visual, video, audio, and/or
alphabetic texts- and deliberately mixing
elements together to create something new
that often specifically mimics one or more of
the sources. Many remixes are meant to be
satirical or overtly political, though satire is
not essential.

9. Remix
+ =

10. Remix
+
=

11. If you’re offended by profanity, plug your
ears right about now
Whose song is this?
Whose song is this?

12. Another Example
• The New Yorker ran a piece on Danger Mouse
and the idea of mash-ups. You might recognize
it. 
• “Mashups find new uses for current digital
technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-
effect relationship behind almost every
change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear
changes, and then the music does.”
• So… whose song is this?

13. A Stroke of Genius
“In October of 2001, a d.j. named
Roy Kerr, calling himself the
Freelance Hellraiser, sent Temple-
Morris [a mash-up show duo] a
mashup called “A Stroke of
Genius,” laying Christina
Aguilera’s vocal from “Genie in a
Bottle,” a lubricious pop song,
over the music from the Strokes’
“Hard to Explain,” a brittle,
honking guitar song. “

15. back to the visual while still looking at
music…
• Is it “okay” for Nas to do this?
• Is it okay for FOX to depict Nas in the ways
that they have?