Mash ups and remixes: Should users be allowed to create their own content using existing material?

REMIXERS MANIFESTO
1. Culture always builds the past.
2. The past always tries to control the future.
3. Our future is becoming less free.
4. To build free societies you must limit control of the past.
(Sourced from RIP: A Remix Manifesto, 2009)

Anyone who was born in the late 1980s onwards has become a part of a "media generation": a generation that has become literate in the ways of the internet and new technologies. The internet allows us to share ideas and information as well as building communities through the usage of technology. People can share their creations and thoughts through a variety of different sites and blogs.

On youtube, there are various user generated videos- some of which contain music that is solely their own and others which contain music that isn't. Along with myspace, youtube has become a place where people can share their creations and promote themselves.

Mash ups have become increasingly popular with artists such as Radiohead and Jay-Z being mixed together to form Jaydiohead, by DJ Max Tannone. In RIP: A Remix Manifesto, Brett Gaylor follows his favourite remixer Girl Talk, a DJ who also uses samples from different songs and artists and puts them together to form something different.

If users create something different using bits of other people's creations is it right?

When Jay-Z found out about project Jaydiohead, he openly supported it with a tweet saying: "There are 3 or 4 REAL gems on Jaydiohead." However, even though this was a good case many other people, especially those who work at the record companies, disagree with mash ups because they take songs without any permission and create something that the artists have not agreed to.  But, if the music is out there, surely it's there to be enjoyed?

I think that users should be allowed to create new content using others creations. Originality isn't around much these days, in fact many of Walt Disney's creations were stolen from things that were already in the public domain. So, maybe we need to 'borrow' other people's ideas to create our own successful ones?

Is web 2.0 different from the original idea of the web?

"Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along." -Tim Berners Lee

Web 2.0 has allowed the internet to become more of an environment where user content can be created. Sites like myspace, facebook and even this blogging site have emerged from the evolution of the internet. Users can now create things in simple steps without having to have any knowledge about codes that are needed to create websites because it already done for them. Therefore, web 2.0 allows people to connect with others around the world without having to go through the long-winded process of creating a website from scratch.


With web 1.0 people were just consumers, but now with 2.0 they have become prosumers. People can now get more involved with the process in which things are made. For example, ordinary people can create apps for an android phone or an iPhone. 


Web 2.0 is not completely different from the original idea of the web because the whole idea of the internet is to connect people. However, it differs in the way that is allows people to be connected. Ideas can be shared more freely and in different formats. Youtube and social networking sites have become a big internet communites with people sharing and interacting all over the world. With a few clicks of your mouse you can become part of a social networking site and start meeting new people who share similar interests. All the hard work is done for you, for example if you join facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has already done everything so that you can create an account in seconds!