We’ve examined the absurdities of copyright law onmultipleoccasions. But hardly anywhere are these more apparent than when it comes to music licensing. (Did you know that every time “Happy Birthday,” the world’s most popular song, is sung in a film, TV show or commercial, someone paid a fee and the song brings AOL Time Warner about $2 million in royalties annually?)
When trying to find holiday songs for their upcoming web series, Scotty Iseri and Matthew Latkiewicz got a first-hand taste for said absurdities. So, to illustrate how copyright law is nipping at the holiday spirit, they rallied some of remix culture‘s greatest advocates — CreativeCommons founder Lawrence Lessig, netcaster Leo Laporte, copyright liberalization crusader Cory Doctorow, Dick DeBartolo (known as Mad‘s maddest writer), Rocketboom’s Zadi Diaz, Wired founder Kevin Kelly, and Mark Frauenfelder of MAKE and BoingBoing fame — to write and record a CreativeCommons Christmas Carol. And it’s just as priceless as you’d expect:
For more on copyright law and remix culture, don’t miss Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age — the wonderful free documentary from Yale Law & Technology. Meanwhile, please consider putting CreativeCommons on your holiday giving list and support one of the most important movements of our time with a donation.
In 2010, we spent more than 4,500 hours bringing you Brain Pickings. If you found any joy and inspiration here this year, please consider supporting us with a modest donation — it lets us know we’re doing something right and helps pay the bills.
We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays, offers the week’s main articles, and features short-form interestingness from our PICKED series. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
Yesterday, we had the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project fame, who inspired us to excavate an old pet project of ours featured here nearly two years ago: An exploratory story of what happiness is, told in TED soundbites and kinetic typography — a true labor of love that took three weeks to compose, audio-edit and animate. Enjoy!
The complete list of speakers, in order of appearance, can be found on the TEDify site.
In 2010, we spent more than 4,500 hours bringing you Brain Pickings, over which we could’ve seen 53 feature-length films, listened to 135 music albums or taken 1,872 trips to the bathroom. If you found any joy and inspiration here this year, please consider supporting us with a modest donation — it lets us know we’re doing something right.
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
What Lady Gaga has to do with the guillotine, or how ABBA took down Henry VIII’s wives.
We’re big proponents of remix culture and today we have something from its most bizarre yet brilliant fringes: Behold historyteachers, a “History for Music Lovers” project adapting famous historical events and figures to famous songs.
Despite the decidedly absurd proposition, the videos actually feature surprisingly excellent vocals, lyrical adaptation and production value, not to mention impressively accurate impressions of the original performers, out-Gagaing Gaga and nailing Debbie Harry’s famous mic-dance-hop to the T.
The brainchild of a Hawaiian history teacher duo, mysteriously titled Mrs. B and Mr. H, the project is a piece of pure remix genius. Catch all 47 videos on the historyteachers YouTube channel and marvel at the wonderful intersection of geekery, creativity and quirk.
In 2010, we spent more than 4,500 hours bringing you Brain Pickings. If you found any joy and inspiration here this year, please consider supporting us with a modest donation — it lets us know we’re doing something right and helps pay the bills.
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
Brain Pickings remains ad-free and takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit, between the site, the newsletter, and Twitter. If you find any joy and value in it, please consider a modest donation.
newsletter
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it's cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week's best articles. Here's an example. Like? Sign up.
We’ve got a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays, offers the week’s main articles, and features short-form interestingness from our PICKED series. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
