Digital technology has transformed everyday creativity and innovation, providing the tools for anyone to be content producers, researchers, and inventors. However, along with freedom of dissemination and ease of content re-use, issues of copyright become complex. The same laws that were designed to incentivize innovation by protecting ownership also constrain re-use and access. In this talk I discuss case studies of creative remix and critique in the context of traditional copyright laws, explaining the power of fair use tempered by the challenges that content creators can face. I also present open access as a paradigm that has allowed for new forms and scales of creativity, innovation, and scholarship.

Dr. Casey Fiesler is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at CU. Armed with a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech and a JD from Vanderbilt Law School, she studies the role of law, ethics, and norms in socio-technical systems. Also interested in copyright advocacy, she has interned for Creative Commons and sits on the legal committee of the Organization for Transformative Works. She is also a published science fiction writer and occasional remixer, most notable being her feminist remix of the book Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer.