TED: Embrace the Remix

Kirby Ferguson gave a TED talk about innovation and how all things new are actually just taking something old and changing a few small parts then putting it back out there as your own new creation. Kirby argues that everything new is in fact a remix.

The example that he used was the producer for the Gray Album who took the Beatles White album and Jay-Z Black album and remixed those two together to create a masterpiece of his own that directly took snippets from each album.

They were later sued for violating their copyright but in fact it is new art even through it explicitly changed the dynamic and made it their own. Music has its own rights but Kirby goes into why having these copyrights and patents can harm new innovation. Bob Dylan was the example Kirby used to show that all musicians at one time or another tend to pull from each other’s melodies and then make it into their own. Even Steve Jobs said at the start that he was stealing from others ideas and 20 years later he said he would go to war over those who steal from him. Overall, the patent industry keeps that patent for 20 years and makes it hard for people to improve on their designs because of the need to license out their patent.