Remix Culture Seemed So Cool. But The Inevitable Authorship Wars Have Consumed Us

“You don’t need a printing press to be a journalist anymore. You don’t need a museum to be an artist. Web platforms have made it so anyone can distribute anything online. They’ve also shortened the distance between making something and remixing it; between distorting other people’s original work and just copying it outright. The same tools that enable artists to share their work widely makes it easier for those same artists to get ripped off by outsiders who sometimes profit from this kind of theft. But money isn’t the only thing separating collaboration from co-option.”