Everything is a Remix (Original Series) on HackerTube: recommended by 7 Hacker News commenters across 7 separate months, 2017–2026.
documentary · evergreen
Kirby Ferguson's video essay series arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers music, film and technology, then turns to copyright and patents.
HN invokes it constantly in debates over originality, copyright and AI training, and calls it the best explanation of creativity as remixing.
“The best explanation of creativity that I have found is a video series by Kirby Ferguson called Everything Is a Remix”
18 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Reminds me of one of my favourite video essays -- "Everything is a Remix" [0]. The video and this article cover the same ideas albeit with different examples. Which is funny on a meta level -- the article could be called a remix of the video. The video (if I recall correctly) goes a bit further, attacking patents/IP law as anti-creative. [0]: ▶ this video
in “Copying is the way design works (2020)” · View on HN
I find that most people don't understand creativity. If you believe an artist or inventor is some mystic sage who creates works ex nihilo , then you misunderstand creativity and attribute to it far too much. And therefore you might grant an artist a period of copyright that is longer than is really deserved or needed. Through much of my life, I have been accused of being "creative". In elementary school my class recognized me as the best at drawing. In fifth grade I wrote a book that was checked out so many times from the school library that it filled up the check-out card front and back. In high school, I made dozens of little movies with my friends. After college I was a graphic designer, and both of my employers expressed awe at my work. The best explanation of creativity that I have found is a video series by Kirby Ferguson called Everything Is a Remix, ▶ this video It shows what I always knew in the back of my head: that nothing I ever made was from staring at a blank sheet of paper. It was just me ripping off all my favorite things I had seen before. Everyone tries their hand at art, and often it obviously is a copy. My secret was that I would take a little of this, a little of that, copy 5 different things and mix them all together, rather than making a straight copy of just one thing. I wasn't trying to hide anything, it was just how my mind naturally worked. I thought one thing from one movie was cool, so I took part of that. I thought something else from a drawing was co
in “Copyright doesn't need 95 years to get the job done” · View on HN
Watch Everything is a Remix: ▶ this video I've been prolific over the years in programming and art & code, and about 99% of it was remixes of others work. I'm not ashamed of that - many artists draw inspiration from multiple sources. The trick is to put your own spin on it, not directly rip off someone else's work. Many artists will never tell you they borrowed from various sources, because they think that would come across as unoriginal and merely copying others work, but have a few beers with an artist and suddenly they start sharing their secrets...
in “Ask HN: How can I get better at original thinking and being creative?” · View on HN
I would highly recommend the "Everything is a Remix" series on YouTube to show how a lot of "creative" work is really just combining different items. ▶ this video
in “Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems” · View on HN
I used to have the same view. Watching "Everything is a Remix" [1] helped me broaden my perspective. [1] ▶ this video
in “Sora: Creating video from text” · View on HN
> it's to allow the creator to extract all the possible value from their work That may be why governments of the world keep passing copyright laws now and how they view copyright. But copyright was established as a "balance" between making it profitable for the author to create the work (read: not to extract billions of dollars out of a work) in order to benefit the public . The primary goal has always been to benefit the public, not the author. Also, one of the reasons why copyright should be finite and not have too long of a term is because no author has ever created anything - anything at all - from scratch . They themselves have built upon the work of others . This is why copyright is meant to be a system where one creates something upon something else, and then someone new can create something new upon that previous work, and so on. Copyright was meant to be a kickstarting mechanism for authors, not a rent-seeking one, which is how it's used today. If you still don't see this what I'm trying to say from my comment, I highly suggest you watch this video: ▶ this video
in “Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection for old songs” · View on HN
This discussion reminds me of the "Everything is a Remix" [1] documentary. We tend to look at the winners to explain history, even though in many cases multiple players were working on the same theories at the same time, and the likely outcome would have been exactly the same if the winners have not existed. Worth watching. [1] ▶ this video
in “Tesla’s Dangerous Sprint into the Future” · View on HN
If copying content from harddrive to another is theft, then so is DNA copying itself. Everything is a Remix culture. We should promote remix culture rather than hamper it. Everything is a Remix (Original Series) ▶ this video
in “Miasma: A tool to trap AI web scrapers in an endless poison pit” · View on HN
> some piece of work was human created Are thoughts and ideas creations? Or you just mean the literal typewriting? How do you prove an idea is original and you have been in a vacuum not influenced _by anything at all_? If anything The Hunger Games is the perfect example that you can get away with anything you want, and that was almost 20 years ago. Everything is a remix ▶ this video or if you hate your life [link]
in “Books by People – Defending Organic Literature in an AI World” · View on HN
Whatever helps you sleep at night. You just described everything: ▶ this video The entire evolutionary process which resulted in us and all of human invention can be summed as copy w/ blur; fight; repeat.
in “MusiCoT, a chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting technique for music generation [pdf]” · View on HN
This video is a remix of all kinds of other videos in the same Content - Net Neutrality. Everything is a Remix Remastered ▶ this video Open Source Documentary on Net Neutrality [link] EVOLUTION - Linux Commercial [link] …and many more! This is a nonprofit video with one simple goal: to make you think.
in “20 Years of Social Future // NoSocial Past [video]” · View on HN
> he didn't invent or spearhead the whole thing Many of the bigger inventions in history were popularized by someone other than the original inventor, because everything is a remix: ▶ this video
in “What Is Post-Quantum Cryptography? – NIST” · View on HN
Do not start with me with this shit. Of course artists need to eat. I'm on the fucking internet essentially begging because I struggle so much with capitalism and the idea that almost all forms of employment force me to restrict my intellectual property, or assign it to someone else. Every time I'm forced to do it because the bank account is low I can feel it grinding down my soul. It is antisocial to prevent people from building upon my ideas (or any ideas). We should take every step we can to strengthen the commons. (see "Everything is a Remix"[0]) I dropped out of fucking high school and was homeless couch surfing in LA for years trying to break into steady VFX work, I don't think for a lack of skill/blood/sweat/tears[1]. I'm well aware artists need to eat. The problem isn't technological progress, (jfc this is all open source!!! stability is doing god's work by undermining the value of ghouls who try to restrict access to these models for personal profit). It's certainly not that copyright is too weak in preventing people form building off the aggregate styles and work of artists. I learned style by fucking copying the masters[2]!! This is how art is supposed to work. The problem it's the disgusting economic/political system that has twisted copyrights and patents into a device to enable rent seeking for those who can afford to purchase/commission them rather than protecting the innovation and creativity that they were meant to. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link] [2] [link]
in “I used Stable Diffusion and Dreambooth to create an art portrait of my dog” · View on HN
The 2012 video "Everything is a remix" couldn't be truer today than it was 12 years ago. ▶ this video
in “Against Automated Plagiarism” · View on HN
Everything is a Remix: ▶ this video "A child never writes his own alphabet. A seed does not grow, it needs soil, water, and radiant energy. A sailboat does not sail, it's shoved by the wind. Nothing in nature is self-activating." - Jacque Fresco We claim to be self-made, to be "born that way", yet we all have accents. But not just accents of speech, accents of action (the surfer learning to skate will skate with a 'surfing accent': [link] ), accents of thought (many of us are familiar with the archetypal poor person in a difficult environment which imprints a 'roof could fall in at any moment' mentality, who then becomes rich yet remains in that frugal mindset), accents permeating every atom of behavior we exhibit. Why are we drawing a line around speech and saying "accents only develop here... everywhere else, we can be totally original or totally genetically talented!" The mind is fashioned by what it feeds on.
in “An Interview with Jerry Seinfeld (2017)” · View on HN
Couldn't agree more... It's very depressing that this post is popular, wouldn't want Copilot shut down over some drama queen lawyers that have no connection to the reality of software development and ALL creative fields. Creation requires influence: ▶ this video The entire fucking concept of intellectual property and copyright is flawed from the get go. The issue people are wrestling with beneath the surface is not copyright but the monetary system itself which incentivizes this "chisel off one another" behavior and "MINE!" behavior because otherwise how will you survive if you can't monetize your actions?, but intelligent socioeconomic alternatives exist: [link] People are trying to solve this problem in an ass-backwards way. Either move to universal basic income or a resource-based economy and make all ideas 'free', 'copyable' and 'remixable' since it doesn't matter either way you have access to some resources (in UBI) or all resources for free (in resource based economy) and don't need to monetize anything since you have access to everything...instead people are content with making life shittier. "We stand on the shoulders of giants" said Newton, but oh no.. this piece of paper called 'the law' knows better!
in “GitHub Copilot investigation” · View on HN
Arguments like this always make me think of Everything is a Remix [0] or how allegedly the most sincerest form of flattery is imitation. [0] ▶ this video
in “DeepMind: A Generalist Agent” · View on HN
Lots of differences with the x-59, no wing canards, one engine on the x-59 vs 3 on the XB-1, the XB-1 seems much shorter. On the plus side the X-59 was developed by Lockheed and one of their advisors, Dr. Johnson was a CTO at Lockheed so there could be some cross pollination there. That said, its kind of picking nits. If everything's a remix[1] is true, that is even MORE true in aviation. [1] ▶ this video
in “XB-1 Supersonic Rollout” · View on HN