Mashups according to Duane Merrill a freelancer explains it as “an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services”.
This new kind of internal and external data sources combining content over the web shows how the world is transforming through the power of media and digital technology. Henry Jenkins’ article captioned “Taking the You Out of YouTube?” in his introduction of the article expresses; “YouTube, along with Second Life, Flickr, Wikipedia, and MySpace, has emerged as one of the key reference points in contemporary digital culture — emblematic of the move towards what people are calling web 2.0”. He further expresses his predictions about this new culture. “I raised here a few weeks ago. At the heart of the Web 2.0 movement is this idea that there is real value created by tapping the shared wisdom of grassroots communities, composed mostly of fans, hobbyists, and other amateur media makers. I have often celebrated these efforts as helping to pave the way for a more participatory culture — one that will be more diverse and innovative because it expands the range of content we can access”.
Even though media and digital technology have taken over almost everything in our world today. I strongly believe new laws and reforms should be enacted to prevent any bad precedence. As Henry Jenkins says, “if these grassroots efforts are generating value (and in fact, wealth) and their creative power is being tapped by major corporations, at what point should they start receiving a share of revenue for their work? We have all seen major media companies telling us that file-sharing is bad because it takes other people’s intellectual property without just compensation. So, why are these same companies now taking their audience’s intellectual property for free? Do we understand their profits primarily as a tax to support the infrastructure that enables their distribution?”
I believe copyrights laws should be revisited to pave way for individuals and some grassroots entrepreneurs to also benefit from their creativity or intellectual ideas sold to big companies over the web.
