Critical Essay: Stage 2

What is the most important thing when creating a new piece of work? Is it to create the most powerful work possible at any means, or is it to create something unique and original? There have been discussions in class about when it is alright to remix or reuse someone else’s work and when it is not okay. Sometimes, it is best to work off of each other’s ideas to advance as far as possible in the work. While other times, it is best to allow each person to independently express their own ideas in the work with no outside sources. The question of is remixing or reusing someone else's work alright should be decided on a case-by-case scenario because of the fact that not all media cases are created equal and that certain cases such as scientific discovery where shared information can exponentially increase efficiency while there other cases such as novels where remixing or reusing only inhibits creativity.
When is it alright to reuse the works of others to improve upon your work. Many claim that in the past with out copyright laws, men working off of each other’s ideas led to the golden age of discovery with things such as Calculus and democracy being invented. So why should it ever be not alright to use the works of others to make your work better? One argument is that the copyright laws are there to maintain protection for all of the work you’ve created. How would you feel if you created some new invention but another man took your creation and made it better, causing him to receive all of the credit for the invention. Sometimes, using the works of others is unfair for the creater of the original work. The other reason is that there are always people who misuse the power to use other’s works. Say an author creates a work that becomes a best seller. There are always those who plan to make a profit off of the work and create works similar to the original so that they may make a profit off of the work. That just isn’t fair to the original author. This also creates the scenario where many authors start writing the same story and eventually, the literary world would lose its creativity.
If allowing the reuse other works is so bad, why should we ever allow such things to be done? It has been proven in many cases that working off of each other’s ideas can lead to many great ideas that otherwise wouldn’t have been created to be created. If you look at the science world, if no one could use each other’s works to create new ideas, progress would be immensely hampered. Also, so many ideas have been created in the past that it is near impossible for any normal person to create an entirely new idea. Reusing old works can act as a head start to allow more complex and more useful ideas to be created.
There are both pros and cons to reusing the works of others. Which should be allowed: the reuse of works, or complete independence in creating new works? I believe the world is not completely black and white. Some cases would better be served to allow the reuse of works and others are not. For example, I believe that the science R and D should always be allowed to use each others works for help so that the most useful ideas can be created. There is the question of fairness for the original creator but there are ways around this. First, the original creater has the ability to give permission to use the work. If he plans to make further research on the idea himself, it should be protected. But, if the creator wants to allow others to use his work, then this only helps the scientific world. But, I believe literature should not allow the reuse of other works. For one, books would begin to be very boring if the same several books were just written over and over again. For literature, unique new ideas are the key to keeping the world interesting.