ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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Media Literacy

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Remixes

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a la Shmoop

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Remixes.

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So we talked about copyright.

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And a lot of times we take

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original work and we change it.

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And there's a certain amount of change that we can

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do to it to then make it "ours."

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How should we think about remixes and when it's

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enough has changed from the original work that we've made it ours?

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What is a remix?

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A remix is basically anything

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that takes an original idea or multiple original ideas

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and puts them together, adjusts it, manipulates it, changes it

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in some way or another to create

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a new art form, and that's what you're talking about.

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If you're gonna sample

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a piece of music within your bigger song,

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you still need to get the permission of the person you're sampling.

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But you think of remixes mostly with music,

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where someone drops a beat behind it and then calls it a remix.

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[ electronic music ]

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[ woo! ]

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But there's a difference between

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taking someone's work and adding a beat behind it

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and taking someone's ideas and kind of

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changing them to become your own.

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The reason that people remix is familiarity.

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People have made a lot of money off of these

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songs and movies and TV shows and ideas.

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So why start from scratch?

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Why reinvent the wheel when you can take an idea

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that's clearly working and just adjust it a little bit?

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And that's the idea behind a remix.

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People tend to be more

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accepting of a "remix"

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- than they do of copyright violations. - Give us an example.

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What's something that has been successfully

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"remixed"

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and tweaked a little bit

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and then leveraged to go do something else?

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Everything is an example of a remix

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and that's why we're talking about it here.

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People will say, "Well isn't all culture a remix of something else?"

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Yes, it is.

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[ creepy mumbling ]

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Probably everything actually goes back to Aristotle

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and Plato and those folks,

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the first people who ever wrote anything down

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or created culture in some way.

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[ high-pitched throat clear ]

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So everything is an example of

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a remix, whether it's

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creating a new sitcom that looks a lot like another sitcom

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or a song that sounds a lot like another song.

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Katy Perry's "Roar," which everyone says was a rip-off

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of Sara Bareilles' "Brave"...

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Is it a remix or is it a rip-off?

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And that's where this kind of copyrighter/copylefter issue

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comes and it just depends what your stance is on it.

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[ whoop ]

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What is a remix?

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[ high-pitched throat clear ]

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