Lawrence Lessig was on The Colbert Report the other night promoting his new book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. While I agree with some of what he says about people taking existing work and making it anew to resell, sometimes I feel people go way too far.

Simply pushing through some of the submissions for voting on threadless and other sites, I see too many pieces of work where much of the originality was lifted from elsewhere. To each their own when it comes to picking what you want to do to make your own art, but somehow I can't find myself thinking someone's work was all that creative when all they did was a vector on top of a screencap from a movie and submitted it as something original. It's one thing to be a piece of art for a gallery showing. I love pop art and all that has come from it. However, turning it into a cheap and easy submission to score some quick money... I'm just not as impressed.