The artist Kutiman demonstrates why the remix culture will always be ahead of litigators

Ophir Kutiel, or "Kutiman," as he is known professionally, is an an Israel-based artist who has now made a name for himself by releasing an online video music project called ThruYOU, an album made up entirely of remixed YouTube videos, fully credited, but not licensed. The first, "Mother of All Funk Chords" is below.

Lawrence Lessig's praise for the project is perfect: 

"If you come to the Net armed with the idea that the old system of copyright is going to work just fine here, this more than anything is going to get you to recognize: you need some new ideas." 

Merlin Mann's blog entry is also worth reading.

This work reminds me of the Disney-critical "A Fair(y) Use Tale" video that was put together a year or two ago.

Comments

[Brian Reid]

It seems like it's not the law that needs to catch up, but the ease of granting permission to use material for remixing. What if, for example, YouTube had a built-in option when uploading material, where the author of piece could specify what use she/he is willing to allow? Then remixers could use anything for which permission is granted without having to worry.

[Joshua Kim]

Anthony..thanks for posting this....good video....I absolutely loved the Disney video on copyright...had not seen that before.

Brian's idea for YouTube is a great one.

I think we have a role to play in this. Some ideas include:

- Going up the learning curves we need to to make mash-ups part of our suggested (and supported) course project portfolio. To complement video projects, posters etc.

- Figuring out the technology to scale and spread mash-ups beyond the most fluent. I've heard Anthony call this a DJ studio for mash-ups, but one with a low learning curve. If we could get this out of the labs and on to student machines even better.

- Working to find a way to have our curricular media in formats that can be mashed. If we have films or documentaries they need to be in a format that a light video editing tool can work with.

- Baking in education about copyright and attribution at every level of our coursework. Coming up with materials (like the Disney video) that help teach our community of learners.