Life is one big mashup.
If you really think about it there is not much thats really new nowadays. In a bid to sell us yet the same product over and over again the desktop PC has been reincarnated as the laptop, the notebook, the pda, the smart phone etc... In essence they are all the same product with slightly different uses. A different mash of the same components.
The same applies to literature and the arts. For example Disney's 'The Lion King' is a re-hash of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. It's like boiling a soup with a slightly different set of ingredients each time. In science we call it progress. In literature we call it plagiarism.
There is an odd notion that we can protect an idea and yet at the same time use it to inspire the next idea. The protection comes in various formats, from digital rights management, to copyrights and patents.
One of the big problems that this system faces today is the question of what is 'new' and what is 'protected'. With digital media being so easy to replicate in an exact way the boundaries are being blurred by the creatives amongst us.
There is some amazing talent appearing online - only to be removed by the powers of legal protection.
Lucky for me I am not a lawyer, at least I am allowed to mashup more than just old text files to create new contracts!
The same applies to literature and the arts. For example Disney's 'The Lion King' is a re-hash of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. It's like boiling a soup with a slightly different set of ingredients each time. In science we call it progress. In literature we call it plagiarism.
There is an odd notion that we can protect an idea and yet at the same time use it to inspire the next idea. The protection comes in various formats, from digital rights management, to copyrights and patents.
One of the big problems that this system faces today is the question of what is 'new' and what is 'protected'. With digital media being so easy to replicate in an exact way the boundaries are being blurred by the creatives amongst us.
There is some amazing talent appearing online - only to be removed by the powers of legal protection.
Lucky for me I am not a lawyer, at least I am allowed to mashup more than just old text files to create new contracts!
