The array of methods that corporations use to influence new media is astounding and as such it is tricky to pinpoint the most relevant manifestation of corporate power in new media. However, one important way that corporations exert their influence is through legal regulation. This implicates copyright as a relevant framework for examining the issue.
By focusing on concrete examples of copyright legislation, and subsequent cases, we can clearly demarcate a regulatory environment that influences the distribution and ownership of new media products. In conjunction with this investigation we can ask how corporations influence copyright legislation and what this means for new media’s proliferation into the public consciousness.
Recently, copyright has become especially problematic for the entire music industry. Questions regarding the legality p2p downloading have been at the forefront, but the new digital media universe has produced others. An interesting one, in the context of corporate power, has been the ownership and distribution of remix songs.
These “remixes” or “mashups” are creations that splice together existing works of music to create a new song. They are controversial by the fact that they blur the distinction between old and new. As a consequence there is some difficulty in asserting ownership rights over the new song for corporations.
In this type of new media the artist relies upon copyrighted content as the means of producing new works and under current law they are responsible for clearing that use of copyrighted content with the owner. At the inception of mashups this practice was not always observed and since the act of creating these types of works was so novel the rate of creativity outpaced the ability of artists to adhere to legal standards. As such the corporations who owned the copyrights on works that were being employed cried foul and filed lawsuits against the creators.
The technology enabling DJ’s to make these mashups followed trends observed elsewhere in the digital world. Lawrence Lessig refers to this as technology enabling a “cut and paste” culture where users can easily access one piece of content and join it to another.
This is a key point where corporate power comes into play; while any user may gain access to copyrighted content they cannot legally transform that content into a new work with out explicit permission. Michael Serazio views the creation of mashups as a backlash against the control of corporate content where technology becomes the vehicle by which users fend off and produce counterpoints to the “corporate and institutional power of today’s culture factories.”
This modification of the old works to create new ones has been a contentious issue for copyright legislation for a long time. Marcel Duchamp infamously drew a moustache on a copy of the Mona Lisa to illustrate that slight modifications of an existing work can create an entirely new meaning for the work and also to make statement about the amorphous boundaries of creativity.
Unlike paintings, popular music is beholden to an oligopoly of transnational corporations, namely UMG, BMG, EMI, Sony, and Warner. These institutions use cultural works to create financial gain. Consequently these corporations have a vested interest in defining the appropriate new uses of the works where they currently hold the rights.
High quality cultural creations are not granted a reprieve from these existing legal restrictions as evidenced by DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album. Here Danger Mouse mixed together cuts from The Beatles’ White Album with vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album to create a wildly popular and critically acclaimed mashup. Yet when EMI, who holds the rights to The Beatles’ recordings, found that Danger Mouse did not clear any copyrights they issued a cease-and-desist order that demanded Danger Mouse stop distribution of the album.
Corporate power in this context is the ability to stop the distribution of a work through legal regulation. There is a clear relationship between the methods employed to gain control over new works and the rules that existed to prevent the unfair redistribution of what we would consider traditional works (e.g. books). Lessig points out an inconsistency here as he notes that when a student uses a passage from a text in the creation of a paper there is an agreement that compensation is not necessary. This is known as the fair use doctrine, but when an artist takes a small sample from a piece of new media there seems to be no place for fair use to be envoked. This then results in exorbitantly high fees for the creator of a mashup and subsequently makes it extremely impossible for them to distribute a new work.
What then becomes of this new art form? Is it pushed to the periphery of the cultural consciousness? Well if we look around our existing cultural context the answer is no, but there are significant changes in the production of these works that are intended to make them more in line with the demands of law and the financial wants of corporations.
When companies saw the success works like The Grey Album they were quick to jump on board. Serazio claims that major labels began producing their own officially sanctioned mashups and signing DJ’s who would have been punished for creating their otherwise illegal creations. They speed and success with which these corporations were able to absorb this once underground trend is simply astounding.
The most successful mashup sanctioned by a corporation was a 2004 Warner release that brought together Jay-Z and the group Linkin Park for an album called Collision Course. Though the work was dismissed by critics the record debuted at number one and sold nearly 400,000 units in the first week. All the profits from these sales went back into the hands of Warner since they owned the rights to both artists’ works.
What once was the practice of individual users combining their personal tastes into new cultural artifacts became the domain of corporately sanctioned DJ’s working with a limited set of musical pieces to ensure that copyright violations would be avoided and profits would flow directly back to the owner of the relevant copyrights.
The corporate influence over mashups continued, demonstrated by the increased prominence of the genre combined with corporate sponsorship. For example David Bowie sponsored a mashup contest with iTunes and gained sponsorship from Audi, and in the summer of 2005 Heineken sponsored the first concert festival dedicated to live mashup collaboration. Obviously the intent the creators of the genre was not to find a way to sell cars or beer, but with corporations being able to control the flow of these mashups they took on characteristics that made them another means of advertising revenue.
The overarching question here is whether or not corporate influence of regulatory legislation is stifling the creativity of media savvy users. In many ways this form of music was not intended to be restricted to certain artists or songs, but with copyright legislation dictating who can use a work for a certain purpose it became increasingly apparent that artistic freedom cannot be proclaimed immune from the demands of corporate power in the new media atmosphere.
Posted by corporatepowernewmedia 
Posted by corporatepowernewmedia 
Posted by corporatepowernewmedia 