Week 5
I have to say that watching "RIP A Remix Manifesto" I was a little mind blown. Yes it is true that we live in a different age and things may have change a little but if you step back and look we still are just in a slightly bigger box than when the documentary came out. It is also a little nuts that we have freedom of speech and expression in our constitution that protects us and gives us the right to do it but when we talk, or use, or edit someone else's "property" we have no freedom. Take for instance the Mickey Mouse cartoons, and how the Disney Corporation fought tooth and nail to make sure that it is theirs and no one else's. Yet, you could buy a book on how to draw Mickey. So you can draw Mickey, but you can't draw Mickey? It really makes no sense. On top of all that Walt Disney was a mashup artist himself, taking old stories and making them new and pertinent to the new generation. I do see the other side of the argument about music and film though. If I create something I would like the credit for it and if someone came along and remixed it, the people who see or hear that don't know its me and I made that. However, I do not think that big corporations should have the power over all to say that this is not yours, you cannot use it at all. America has gotten so polarized that money equates to power now and that is why policies favor large business and not the people. I don't know if an artist or author has gone too far because what is too far? The boundaries need to be pressed to know where it can go. Culture everywhere changes all the time so why do we try and make sure we stay in one area when culture is taking us to another?
As with most everything's intention, Wikileaks was meant to be good and useful to the public. I believe it is a right to know what the people you elected are doing behind closed doors. Whether that is war or policy or anything else. People have a right to know what is going on. Now on the flip side there are things that people don't need to know like I don't know, launch codes and super secret things the government has going on. Knowledge is a checker. If something bad happens like innocent people and kids get shot and killed, people should know about this and not just be swept under the rug. It is accountability. Take for instance Snowden. Everyone knows the name and either knows him as a whistle blower or a terrorist. Now we have as Americans rights set out in words on a paper and he believed that they were not being respected so he leaked information. Some say that part of the information was a threat to national security but.... I think the U.S is still pretty secure if you ask me. The one thing Snowden did do is create a massive discussion about information and how we store and share it. That is the main goal of Wikileaks, it is to hold people and government accountable and to create a conversation that we can continue to find out what is good and what is bad.
