Fair Use.

An artist is entitled to his or her work. As the creator of a work of art, they (or a company) has creative control over its use, but as we saw in the Remix documentary, fair use is a challenging subject to navigate through.

I thought it was interesting in the documentary how the filmmaker mentioned the parallel between editing mash-up music and writing a research paper. In a research paper, the author can paraphrase and quote someone else's work all day long as long as they use proper academic citations. The original "artist" is credited for their work, but the new author is still allowed to incorporate that first work to create something new, no questions asked. It is considered ethical and even admirable. The same is not true when it comes to multimedia. The original owner is very possessive of the material and when it is used without permission by another artist, such as Girl Talk, it becomes an issue of copyright infringement.

However, there can sometimes be a distinction between the owner and the artist of the work. A record label be more inclined to want to uphold copyright law to uphold a legal standard, while an artist may not care at all. I watched a YouTube video last week from someone whose videos have gone viral, Todrick Hall. His latest video was a music compilation of Taylor Swift songs. He mashed up many of Swift's hits into an a capella rendition that created a new medley. It got millions of views, and eventually he got a compliment on Twitter from Taylor Swift herself. In that case, Hall probably did not have permission to use Swift's music, but Swift did not mind. In reality, the video just boosts the popularity of her songs anyway. Additionally, Hall does not sell the track as an MP3. It's just a video. He gets money from advertisements on his videos, yes, but not directly from selling any copy of the medley. The real question is: Does Swift's record label mind, and would they bother to do anything?

This is somewhat of a stretch, but a similar technique can be seen in reporting. I love theme parks, and many of the websites I frequent report on news and construction updates from theme parks around the country. Many of these sites are not owned by the theme park companies, but rather passionate enthusiasts. The more popular websites' owners have made a career out of updating their sites, yet their success would be obsolete without the existence of those theme parks. The webmasters are making money off of advertisements on their sites and the use of their services by users. The theme parks get nothing directly from these profits. However, one could argue that these unofficial websites still direct more online users to want to visit the theme parks anyway. So while the webmasters aren't giving any money to the parks, the parks still get more money because of the free publicity. It acts in a cyclical way, despite the fact that technically there might be some fair use issues at play. Neither side will ever decide to do anything about it, though, because they both benefit from the other.