There is nothing new under the sun. Nearly everything is a remix of older ideas. Even many of Shakespeare's plays were retellings of popular contemporary stories — we wouldn't have Romeo & Juliet if not for the less copyright-crazy era that he lived in. Your suggestion would work better if it were in response to "20 years isn't long enough for a copyright term."
Yes. But Romeo and Juliet apparently borrowed heavily from works from 1562 and 1582[1]. Since he wrote the play in 1591, both works would have been under today's copyright.
I hope this doesn't sound overly aggressive, but you don't seem to have a very firm understanding of how copyright law works. Derivative works are covered as well. You don't have to literally copy every piece of something with full fidelity to fall under it; borrowing heavily can be quite sufficient. For example, an unauthorized encyclopedia of the Harry Potter universe got stomped because it borrowed heavily from the Harry Potter books. It wasn't actually a copy of any book, but it took enough to get slapped down.
IANAL, but I personally have no doubt that Shakespeare would have been sued if today's copyright culture had existed then. He even copied the characters' names (and yes, characters can be covered by copyright), not to mention most of the major plot elements. It wasn't just "Oh, this general idea is kinda similar to that one."
It's the skill of Shakespeare's story telling that made him so great, not the stories themselves. But the stories are protected by copyright, not the skill.
There is nothing new under the sun. Nearly everything is a remix of older ideas.
Well, kind of. But when I suggest creating something "new", I'm not saying don't remix/use old ideas, I say don't remix/use actual previous existing artifacts.
And let's be clear here, the Pirate Bay is not about creating, it's about consuming.
It's sad that you get downvoted for disagreeing. You make a good point. All you have to do is look at their most popular downloads to see that it's a consumer culture. The majority, if not all, of the most popular downloads on Amy given day are all copyrighted music, movies, and software with the odd indie artist giving it out truly for free.
And you don't make a remix with an mp3. Seriously, that's just silly. If you're looking to remix music, which is what I'm mostly talking about, you need to separate tracks to manipulate them and it's damn near impossible to separate out the drums from the vocals from the keys, etc. if you're working from any listening format like mp3 and the like. Remix culture my foot.
Yes, those pirate bay users are all about remixing and building upon stuff... /s
How about inventing something new?