Aehso’s Output

Animé music video (AMV) is another one of those facinating internet subcultures that should be allowed to grow and influence mainstream media in the future (just as machinima will). If you are a fan of Daft Punk’s One More Time video then this stuff is right down your alley. The creativity and skill exhibited in some of the remixes produced by these amateur artists really is a sight (and sound!) to behold. Cowboy Bebop 007 and Euphoria are two excellent examples of these Anime/Music mashups. (hint: register on the AMV site above to get full access to the download links).

Alas, as Lawrence Lessig points out in his recent article in FT.com, the powers that be (copyright holders) don’t like this creativity one bit and their reactions is predicitable – they are threatening the AMV community. But what exactly are they scared of? Free promotion of their content? As Lessig surmises,

But perhaps a beginning would be a question that one might imagine asking the lawyer, or better, the chief executive, at Wind Up Records:
“Now that you’ve succeeded in stopping thousands of kids from spending hundreds of thousands of hours to make fantastically creative content that promotes your work for free, do you really expect to sell more records next year?”

aehso copyright, music