YouTubers v. the European Union: Remix Videos and the Construction of their Values

Abstract

The European Union's new Directive on Copyright has caused YouTubers to expect negative changes to YouTube as a platform, who have responded with criticism of the directive. YouTube content that is made of a combination of copyrighted and original content, which I call YouTube remix videos, was particularly defended by YouTubers in light of the directive. I have analyzed five cases of such critique on YouTube, with the goal of analyzing how they function to construct the value of remix videos. The five videos all validated remix videos in multiple ways, which functioned to support the main argument that the directive should not make remix videos illegal. By applying a discourse-analytical approach on these videos, based on the idea that values are constructs, I confirmed that the videos function to construct values regarding remix videos. Moreover, the analysis showed that the value of remix videos is constructed in six different ways, which can be classified under five different types of value: economic, social, cultural, democratic, and legal value. These findings show that YouTubers validate remix videos against the directive through multiple values, thus supporting the argument of Göran Bolin that economic value is not the only relevant value. The way the various values were constructed also supported various academic understandings of remix and creativity, particularly by authors such as Lawrence Lessig, Martin Irvine, and Giancarlo Frosio. In consideration of the fact that the five videos that served as this study's corpus were not chosen to be representative of all YouTuber critique on the directive, I do not make any claims regarding the general way in which remix videos are given value on YouTube. Instead, what I hope to offer with this analysis is a framework for future reference, through which the way the value of remix videos is constructed can be studied further.