Mashups

How are mashups posing a potential threat to copyright laws online?

 

A mashup, is a technique that allows for a website, or web applicator to use data from different sources to create a new content. Mashups, are definitely posing a threat to copyright laws online because, everything is accessible for you to use and even though copyright laws prevents you from stealing content there are still loopholes to get around them. For example, in the article 1+1+1=1 by Sasha Frere-Jones, the author breaks down to us what one Dj did to create a “new content”, but was it really “new”?. The author states “Using digital software, Brown isolated instrumental elements of “Debra,” a song by Beck from his 1999 album “Midnite Vultures.” Brown, who is thirty-three and has studied with Max Roach, adjusted the tempo of “Debra” and added live drums and human beat-box noises that he recorded at his small but tidy house in Long Island City. Then he sifted through countless a-cappella vocals archived on several hard drives. Some acappellas are on commercially released singles, specifically intended for d.j. use, while others appear on the Internet, having been leaked by people working in the studio where the song was recorded, or sometimes even by the artist.” Later she states that after finding the right vocals for the song, they are no longer to different songs but now one, “Frontin’ on Debra” is an example of a “mashup,” in which, generally, the vocal from one song is laid over the music from another. I think that Mashup is a form of piracy because you are taking someone’s work, changing its form and calling it yours,  However the article doesn’t see mashups as piracy “Mashup artists like Vidler, Kerr, and Brown have found a way of bringing pop music to a formal richness that it only rarely reaches. See mashups as piracy if you insist, but it is more useful, viewing them through the lens of the market, to see them as an expression of consumer dissatisfaction.”

 

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