Linear as bent

Plagiarism or mash-up

November 9, 2009 at 10:56 am Leave a comment

Mash-ups are a sort of sampling technique, where you take bits of sound/visual/sculpture or what have you, mix them up a lot perhaps changing an edge or two but still retaining recognisable origins, to create a ‘new’ work. How original the ‘new’ work is can be hard to tell, because if it’s not sufficiently original or clearly rips off too much from elsewhere, well, you’ll be hearing from lawyers.

Sampling is very common in the music industry but almost always credit is given or permission obtained. In literature, sampling, if not used as quotation, can come very close to plagiarism. Of course there are ways around this call, for example if bits pulled are from public domain works or the bits fall under ‘fair use’. The key here is giving credit – if you’re not sure if you should point to your source, best to do so. But if you’re copying someone, please don’t say “everyone does it”, because dude, it’s still wrong – unethical if not illegal.

Other ares, such as photoshop-ing images are harder to catch but I don’t know  much about visual use except to say that trademarks are what companies register to protect their brands.

Entry filed under: Creativity. Tags: creative rights, Intellectual Property.