Post 2: Remix

First of all, I would argue that digital technology has had less impact on issues of authorship, access to technology, and means of cultural production than is popularly portrayed in mass media. Take the example of zines and hip-hop, both of which existed before the dawn of the Internet.
When one is writing a zine, one usually remains anonymous. In zine culture, authorship is a little bit different - the author isn't as important as the message is. Moreover, zines use low-tech methods of production. To distribute a zine, all one needs is access to a copy machine and a lot of staples. Many people still write zines in this day and age.
As for hip-hop, this genre is one of many genres that samples other music extensively. For example, there's a song by Nas named I Can that samples Fur Elise by Beethoven. He took the original song and altered the context to make it fit his message. This kind of sampling raises the question of whether the original - in this example, Fur Elise - is still relevant or if the sampling process changed it so much that it now means something totally different. Who is the author?: Beethoven, Nas, or both?
The difference between our era and the early days of sampling is that it is a lot easier to sample and remix now. For example, there is a meme generator online, where one is provided with a template to generate various memes like "paranoid parrot." Using this template, the user types in a punchline. You no longer have to know how to use complicated software to manipulate images; you simply have to go to a website and type in words.
Access to technology is still a pertinent point, but I would argue that it is getting easier as the prices of technology fall and web designers become more cognizant of providing access to users with disabilities. And, like I pointed out in the example of meme generators, you don't necessarily have to know how to code in order to use online tools. It is therefore becoming easier for guerilla organizations to do things like report news from their perspective via blogs and Youtube.
Of course, one major issue is that it's easier to get media than ever before, even if one only uses legal methods. One can download an entire discography or TV show in a matter of minutes or hours. This would have been unthinkable in the middle of the twentieth century. Some authors argue that this ease of access is harmful, whereas other authors embrace it - like Radiohead did in 2007 when they released In Rainbows online and allowed users to pay whatever they wanted, including nothing at all. This is a very contentious point with too many nuances to go into here.
So, in a nutshell, I don't think that digital technology is responsible for the rise of remix and open source culture. Instead, I think that the primary impact that digital technology has had is the fact that it makes it easier to remix and to share art online, so now more people participate in these.

Daniel Crosby