Fans’ free remixing generates profit that owners must consolidate into ownership

Evidence

Grumpy Cat’s rampant popularity was catapulted in large part by hordes of internet users who invested creative capital and resources to remix and meme her image, allowing the cat and her owner to profit from what critical media scholar Christian Fuchs has termed the “surplus labor” of the network. However, despite such extensive dispersals and the spread of her online fame, Grumpy Cat’s owner also did well to consolidate her celebrity and establish origin outlets and ownership over the images. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 173

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fuchs’s surplus labor concept and the tension between fan remixing and celebrity ownership claims. — connects to: Free downloading can benefit the music industry through sampling effects — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media: How Wall Street…, 1373; Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197; Fans pioneered new internet platforms and features out of self-interest — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 535
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that freely given fan creative labor creates the value which the celebrity owner then must legally consolidate into exclusive ownership is a dense, counterintuitive core dynamic of influencer economics.

Broader Connections

• Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity. #exemplifies (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197
• Free downloading can benefit the music industry through sampling effects #contradicts (0.80) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 1373
• Fans pioneered new internet platforms and features out of self-interest #exemplifies (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 535