Discussion of Lessig
From WRIT-2510 Spring 2007 Wiki
Food for thought to guide your reading and re-reading: On page 7 of the introduction, Lessig writes, "this book is about an effect of the Internet beyond the Internet itself: an effect upon how culture is made. My claim is that the Internet has produced an important and unrecognized change in that process. That change will radically tranform a tradition that is as old as the Republic itself. Most, if they recognized this change, would reject it. Yet most don't even see the change that the Internet has introduced."
I want you to take a moment and think about "how culture is made" and "what counts as capital 'C' Culture" in this country and in other countries?
What is the change that Lessig is describing? What does he mean when he talks about the Republic? Why does he say most people would reject this change if they saw and recognized it?
Later he writes: "This rough divide between the free and the controlled has now been erased. The Internet has set the stage for this erasure and, pushed by big media, the law has now affected it" (8).
How does this claim support his earlier argument about how the Internet's effect on how culture is made?
You might want to refer to page 10 where he talks about the law's response to the Internet.
As you continue to read Lessing, think about tracing out some of the connections he's drawing between democracy and the Internet.
Your written reponse:" Why does Lessig focus on the story of Disney and Japanese animation? How does Lessig's discussion of how ideas are circulated relate to the Rosa Parks/Outkast law suit? Reflect a bit on this controversy. You might think about how it relates to similar controversies, such as that over Levis jeans (recently in the New York Times).
Group A should post original posts by Wed., and Group B should post responses by 9 am Fri. morning. Enjoy, Dr. Jan
[edit] Response to Lessig by Andrew La Padula
Information is presented to us everyday for very little cost. Whether it be driving on the highway and passing a billboard, flipping on the TV and watching some commercials, browsing the Internet, or picking up and reading a newspaper, we are surrounded by huge amounts of information which we pay very little to receive. Companies spend lots of money investing in and producing these goods because they believe they have a certain value. These may be advertisements that can induce sales or cartoon characters that will generate viewers. People also produce these goods because they believe their "property" will not be stolen or used by others without proper consent. Copyright laws help protect inventors and designers by insuring that their creations cannot be misused this way. If there were no copyright laws, there would probably be very little invented as the incentive to create something new would be very small.
Lessig aims to show that today, our laws are being applied to property and copyrights differently than they were in the past. “The distinction between republishing someone’s work on the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on the other. Copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern; copyright law today regulates both” (Lessig “piracy” paragraph 11). He relates two stories, the first about Walt Disney and the synchronous sound innovation, and the other about manga and doujinshi comics in Japan, to introduce his argument. In the past, creators would build upon one another’s work. Disney used the tales of others and added upon them, changed them slightly, and combined them with his new animation technique. “This ‘borrowing’ was nothing unique, either for Disney or for the industry” (Lessig Chapter 1 paragraph 11). In Japan, too, there is a great deal of “borrowing.” An entire market of comic books exists because people can build upon other’s characters and stories.
Lessig tells these two stories to show that the borrowing and building upon of other’s works can be very beneficial to culture. The fact that our government is now becoming more and more restrictive with copyright laws is leading to the disintegration of our generation’s creative possibilities. He believes that if the majority of the citizens were aware of what is going on the background, that the biggest corporations which have influence in the government are strengthening these laws their way, the people would revolt against these changes.
[edit] Response to Andrew La Padula's Response by Daniel Wong
I think that Andrew's points are valid in that "borrowing" and building upon other's works is at times beneficial to culture. However the extent to which this "borrowing" takes place is debatable. But how far is too far? Copyrighted material is copyrighted for a reason. For example, in one advertisement, a casino placed a picture of Rosa Parks with the caption “what a ride”. Not only is that insulting, but I think that it is disrespectful to her image. There is a balance between the positive and negative aspects that result from interchanging ideas. The positive being exactly what Andrew was speaking of, a foundation which to work off of. Inversely, the negative aspect can be reflected in the ad that I had just previously mentioned. So where the line is drawn depends upon our current culture and what is more important to us; money or public well being.
[edit] Respose to Lessig by Cory Anderson
Lessig brings up some very controversial points in his book Free Culture. The whole issues between piracy and protection have become increasingly intense over the past couple of years, as Lessig states, “Today we are in the middle of another “war” against “piracy.” The Internet has provoked this war. The Internet makes possible the efficient spread of content.” However I tend to disagree with this statement, sure the internet is the means in which piracy is taking place, but who is using the internet in a way it was not meant to be used. I think you could compare this situation to a gun. People kill people not guns, this idea I think works the same way with the internet. I agree that piracy is a big problem within today’s society but I think Lessig points his finger at the internet itself too much. Most of the ideas Lessig refers to are very interesting concerning creativity being affected by more and more copyright restrictions. More and more people are being accused of infringing on copyright material recently. However I do think that people are starting to realize this and are trying to creative a method to help prevent this, for example the new launching of creative commons licensing. This is a type of license that is copyright free, as long as the original artist’s are mentioned. Archive.org is another website with completely copyright free material on it. I think this issue is becoming more visible to people because more people are using the internet. It will be interesting to see which direction restrictions will go in the future.
[edit] Response to Cory Anderson by Jeffrey Connolly
I agree with Cory about a lot of the things he said, especially the idea that Lessig brings up a lot of controversial issues about the Internet and how bad it is. I also believe that it is not the Internet itself that is the problem but more so the users of the Internet. When Cory said," People kill people, not guns." This is a fact because the Internet is not just sitting there asking for people to illegally download music, file share and several other things being done which would not have been possible without the Internet. Everyone who is a user of the Internet should be aware that piracy is a very big problem these days and the film and even more so the music industry is facing huge loses from this piracy. This is going to bring about more laws being pushed through congress as well as more lawsuits against those who infringe upon the copyright and file sharing laws.
[edit] Respose to Cory Anderson by Keve Zoltani
I agree with many things that Cory said. In the recent decade, piracy has been a topic of much discussion. Its seems that less action is being taken nowadays with the regulations of material being harder to monitor. Since the internet has revolutionized data transfer and access, much of it is taking place online, but as Cory said, people's misuse of the internet is the biggest cause of the piracy. Piracy is still a problem, and it would seem to being growing and being passed on to younger generation, so piracy is getting worse. Though the point of creativity being affected by copyright is an interesting one. Its hard to use anything which is copyrighted since lawsuits will follow, but many other open source applications give more room for creativity. Linux is a good example which is evolved over years and given people full control to twist and shape it as they please. I believe keeping fewer limitations on who owns what will give more room for improvment and a better society
[edit] Response to Keve Zoltani by Barrington Smith
I also agree with what Cory and Keve mentioned in the body of their texts. I would like to add, however, that Lessig mentions a few things about abuse of patents and ideas that are not online. He mentions the creator of FM radio, and how his ideas were put on the back burner by RCA because RCA didn't want to revamp their already popular AM radios. Yes, the internet may increase behaviors like this in that posting ideas online can allow people to steal and idea and make a lot of money, but there are protections in place, including open source licencing (which Keve mentions), that allow people to share their ideas with the world while protecting them from being copied. Armstrong, the inventor of the Frequency Modulator, may have been better off putting his discovery into the open source community had it been around at the time, since RCA was smothering his idea. What better way to make the world a better place than to publicize an idea that can revolutionize the world. More protections are being put into place and developed because of the internet, including the idea of intellectual property, that allow a person to share ideas while still taking credit for them. It will make the internet a rich, safe environment for research and the sharing of information.
[edit] Respose to Cory Anderson by Daniel Jones
I also agree with Cory and Lessig about piracy. This is a prevalent issue in society today that has yet to be thwarted. I like the gun metaphor, but I see piracy more like AIDS. The problem has been scrutinized and it is common knowledge how it works, but there are no cures just preventions. What is hard about stopping piracy is that when one option is closed off such as Napster, which allowed for downloading of music illegally, different programs come out that work around the law. Another reason for the lack of a cure is because pirated properties usually stems from legal properties. An example of this is if there was a song I liked and I bought it the song off a music service provider. Now that I have that song I want my friends to listen to it so I send it to them. They can then send it to there friends and that is how the piracy chain starts.
[edit] Response to Lessig by Robert Augelli
I fully agree with almost all of Lessig’s thoughts and comments. It has become painfully clear over the years that fears of the Internet shaping major commercial success has made businesses try to shape the Internet. Lessig states that, “My fear is that unless we come to see this change, the war to rid the world of Internet “pirates” will also rid our culture of values that have been integral to our tradition from the start” (Lessig Introduction). This is an argument that many people have been alluding to over the years. It may not be correct to wrongly steal information online, be it music or movies, but it is equally as wrong to completely manipulate the way people try to attain them. The major players in the game of online copyright infringement claim that consumers are being illegal and unfair with these new methods of media sharing. The problem is however, that these companies are too busy trying to prevent this new movement than trying to properly and justly make it thrive legally. They are blinded by their own purpose that they have missed how they are prohibiting the American way as much as they claim the consumer is.
Lessig makes a fantastic allusion to the AM vs. FM battle of earlier years. Even then, companies were too busy trying to prevent new technology in an effort to make their aging technology survive longer. The most important point that Lessig makes is that most people simply do not care. The masses could care less about the assault these corporations are making on a seemingly new way of life, simply because they may not know how it is affecting them. Lessig actually puts it rather bluntly, “There has never been a time in our history when more of our “culture” was as “owned” as it is now” (Lessig Introduction). We live in a time where most people know very little about what is offered to them, and because of this, have no way of understanding how crippled these technologies become because of bigger companies “looking out” for the masses. Couple this with the lethargic and apathetic attitude that many societies carry today, and it is easy to see how this feeds the crippling affect.
Lastly, Lessig claims that society simply needs to consider the common sense side of what is occurring today. By stopping and thinking about what is occurring, perhaps some of these stifling actions that are occurring can be prevented from growing, or even occurring in the future.
[edit] Response to Robert Augelli's Response by Eric Wyler
I agree on all counts with what Bobby has said. Businesses and corporations are getting too caught up in the legal battles of piracy on the internet, and frankly, I don't see a good way of stopping it short of infringing on the very rights that have served as the foundation of this country. Unfortunately, as Bobby notes, that is exactly what is happening. Lessig states that the reason he wrote this book is because "a free culture [can] be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it," and our free culture is the one that is under threat (Preface).
Bobby brings up another interesting point about the simple ignorance present in today's society. People simply don't know what's going on, but in reality, how can they? Information is in such abundance that you can't know about everything, you can't even know a small portion of everything. In the grand scheme of things, we all, as individuals, know a lot about our lives, but not too much about everything else. There is too much information, however, to expect people to know that much. Lessig does a good job of emphasizing this problem, and while we can't deal with individual issues, we can influence the laws that govern the processes that lead to these problems. People (or, more appropriately, companies) need to understand that borrowing should be acceptable, to a degree. Lessig, when talking about doujinshi, mentions that "these copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They are huge" (Creators). Ideas don't simply spring out of nowhere, and there are some studies that demonstrate that our thoughts are ultimately defined by the words we know to express them. People need templates to work off of; creativity is endless, so what's wrong with one bout of creativity being spawned by someone else's? Lessig also mentions the open source movement, and I feel this is an excellent step in the right direction. We, as a culture, need to demonstrate that ideas can be truly free.
In the grand scheme of things, we need to take a good, hard look at the world around us. The reason different cultures are different is because the "norm" of the culture is different. We need to change the norm of our culture. Think of what is on the news these days. You hear about people suing McDonald's for being fat, or for suffering burns from coffee that was inappropriately labeled (who ever thought coffee would be hot?). There are copyright wars occurring constantly. Nobody seems to want to get along with anyone else, everybody just wants the whole cake to himself. I am not surprised that other countries view us the way we do. I think that, as a nation, we need to change. The corporations are responding to the way we, as the public, act. If we're going to sue them, then they're going to fight us when we borrow their ideas, or pirate their goods. It simply can't go on like this. Every day, the battle worsens on both sides. We need to learn to work together, and it needs to happen soon.
[edit] Response to Robert Augelli's Response by Brian McEvoy
I’m not sure if I could possibly agree with Rob and/or Lessig more! It seems recently that copyright infringements are everywhere, more so than ever before. A result of a less law-abiding populace? I doubt it. Lessig asks: “Or is the radical shift away from our tradition of free culture yet another example of a political system captured by a few powerful special interests?” (Lessig, Introduction). Though, in question form, I couldn’t help but feel it was used more as a statement. A statement, I wholeheartedly agree with.
Like Rob, I find Lessig’s reference to the FM vs. AM controversy in excellent taste. These giant companies are throwing around their large wallets to persuade the law in anyway they can to slow or prevent alterations to the markets they hold ever so tightly. A similar, even more recent case is that of the RIAA and digital distribution of music. Like Lessig, I do think that the owners of digital media do need some form of protection but if you’ve taken part in legal music downloads or have just used the newest version of Windows Media Player with any DRM’d (Digital Rights Management) media you can see why I think the protection just goes too far.
My argument may not involve the stifling of creativity (at least not directly) but it does infringe on our rights. More specifically, infringing on our right to Fair Use. When you download music from a legal site it will almost surely come “wrapped” in a DRM coating. What this DRM does is prevent you (in WM11, which you are generally pigeonholed into using) from listening to your music on anymore than one machine, impedes the ability to burn to CD and oftentimes prevents the music from being uploaded on an MP3 player (usually the I-Pod unless I-Tunes is used). This music I’m referring to is not music you “rent” (plans like Ruckus) either; this is music you buy track by track or album by album. This is music that should have the same options as music from CDs.
Why has this been allowed to happen? It’s because the RIAA holds so much power. Microsoft, the largest purveyor of this technology has money as its motive and the RIAA’s money is more important than the convenience of the consumer. To me this is the epitome of Lessig’s argument. Under the Fair Use clause the consumer is supposed to have the right to do anything they want with their purchase in reason. In the case of music, that means playing it in different players, backup CDs etc. something that certainly can’t be done to any degree of ease with the anti-piracy measure in place now.
[edit] Response to Lessig by E. Filipov
In his writing Lessig discusses how the Internet is similar to other revolutionary inventions throughout history. He begins talking about Causby’s unpleasant incident with aviation and the government’s involvement with the issue, and relates this to the Internet by saying that new technologies often do not have the necessary laws in place to regulate people’s use. Without laws the World Wide Web becomes an extremely dangerous place because information is extremely easy to post and there is very little proof of the quality of readings. Furthermore Leissig talks about how individuals often do not have a chance to regulate such technologies as in the RCA and Armstrong where a human life was lost due to the extreme power of a company. The Internet is becoming a similar scenario because corporations are using it to target their own desires and often don’t respect individual’s beliefs and ideas. Lessig then gives humanity a warning because unlike most new technologies the Internet has become popular extremely quickly and is now taken as granted. He thinks this is extremely dangerous and that this matter needs urgent attention. In his Chapter One “Creators” he discusses the share and illegal use of information in relation to both the World Wide Web and the Japanese comics industry. He discusses both the idea “law bans stealing in whatever form” (Lessig) and also the concept to “build upon the work of other” (Lessig), but he doesn’t give a clear decision on which approach he thinks is right. I agree with Lessig’s ideas and I strongly believe that the World Wide Web needs stricter laws and control. Until now the use of the Internet has been controlled by human integrity and cultural norms, however these aspects of philosophy, do not control all people and lead to an uncertainty of the future. I believe laws created by the government would be beneficial in protecting people yet would allow for fair information sharing as described by Lessig.
[edit] Response to E. Filipov's Response by Ryan Bobrowski
In what ways do you think the government should impose on the Internet? What laws could you see them making that could make the Internet a safer place while still maintaining the freedom the Web is known for? I believe government restrictions on copyright infringement on the Internet would upset a lot of people, and in the end, there would be no way to enforce it fully. Many smart companies have embraced file-sharing and they have met some success by creating pay sites where users can download music, movies, etc. I believe the government's role should be to support programs like this, instead of placing restrictions on people. The Internet should be a place where people can do whatever they want, within reason, and if anyone were to try and hinder that, at the very least it shouldn't be the government. Lessig mentions that not interfering could be very dangerous- what specific dangerous thing do you think could happen if the Internet were to stay the way it is?
[edit] Response to Ryan Bobrowski's Response by E. Filipov
I strongly agree with your idea of legal file sharing companies; however I think that this is not the current norm used by most people. I think that the government should take a stronger stand against those sharing illegally, perhaps completely banning illegal sites if this is at all possible. I think stricter action in file sharing would help protect at least the movie and music industries who are currently loosing money from illegal file sharing. Furthermore I believe that privacy is a growing issue in today’s World Wide Web. This is not only in regards to what a person posts about themselves, but also how people portray others. I feel as there is not enough control in this area, and that possibly encouraging more education for people to post on the WWW would be extremely helpful. Finally I don’t think that the government should restrict Internet use, but in agreement with Lessig, I think that people need to take a lot more time to evaluate this new technology, before completely embracing it
[edit] Response to Lessig by Christopher Jaeger
What makes it interesting as I read this, is that I actually am a member within the doujin scene of things. By far I'm no published author of my own, but a proponant of the unique culture of circles it brings up.
Lessig explains that the law exists with a strange balance on its regulation of information. A successful culture, he says, is either a free culture, or a permission culture. In neither case is the creation or art a freely produced and marketted item. Rather, it is a difference between whether the creation is done by its own free right, or by the granted right of the owner of material or publisher. The internet brings threat to this scene, Lessig claims, because response to it threatens to its free culture threatens to rework into a permission culture, to steal the freedom of creation.
Lessig quotes early on, "Common sense revolts at the idea" (Justice Douglas). It was by that that the old law of property was repealed, and it is by this that Lessig supports his argument about the internet. I agree with it, in so much that, indeed, common sense makes more sense to continue our free culture, that to rob it is against it. The Rosa Parks controversy, to what extent does the action of the lawsuit make logical sense? The name of the song creates an association to Rosa Parks, and it refers to her action, but what it creates is a lasting image, something to work off of. And thus to identify. It doesn't steal from Rosa Parks, but instead it points her out.
Lessig himself brings up the cases of Disney and doujin material. "Thus, even though the things that Disney took—or more generally, the things taken by anyone exercising Walt Disney creativity—are valuable, our tradition does not treat those takings as wrong. Some things remain free for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good" (Lessig), he says near his conclusion of the first chapter. The act of building off an idea, though the idea is of value, it does not equate to a violation or theft. Rather, it is more effectively a promotion. And the internet furthers this. Take the doujinsoft scene. An artist stumbles across a doujin computer game sold at one of the Comiket sessions pointed at in the reading, the massive gatherings of doujinshi marketting. The artist is inspired and creates his own doujinshi off of it, and sends out the comic to be read. A prospective buyer obtains the doujinshi and enjoys its reading, such that he looks into the original source. It is a cycle of sources, a cycle of inspiration and building off that leads to the success of doujinshi, and in turn, a free culture. It is by this that I can see, to my own end, fairly clearly the argument of Lessig, and thereby agree that the attempts to siphon off creativity are perhaps counterintuitive. For if the logical flow of events by common sense already directs proper credit and payment, why should we oppose this?
[edit] Response to Christopher Jaeger by YOU
[edit] Response to Lessig by Kenny Johnson
It's interesting to consider what Lessig calls "Walt Disney creativity - a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different" (Lessig, Chapter One: Creators). Some of the most "creative" work I've seen lately isn't one hundred percent original by any means. Popular songs today sample clips from other songs. Parodies, by nature, build on past creativity to present a new point of view, or make a joke. For example, one of my favorite videos on YouTube takes the popular OK Go Music Video and makes fun of it! Parody seems to be applauded, yet most other cases in which intellectual property is borrowed and improved upon are shunned, with artists labeled as "pirates." Is piracy good? Not always. Intellectual property can often be distributed for free, but I think the creator still deserves recognition and reward for his work. Still, I think it's beneficial to improve upon work. Linux is strong because its source code is freely available. Video games often borrow features from each other, while always making improvements to compete on store shelves. Lessig states that creativity "is always and everywhere at least partially done without permission and without compensating the original creator" (Lessig Chapter One: Creators) and I agree completely. Even with my own creative work, while I sometimes think of ideas that are new and unusual, often is inspired by past work that I admire or that I think I can improve upon. It will be interesting to see how copyright law might adapt with new technology, since I do think that people deserve credit for their creative work. On the same note, this borrowing of culture that is sometimes considered piracy helps our culture grow and improve, and it would be a shame to halt this creativity over claims of ownership.
[edit] Response to Kenny Johnson's Response by Matthew Fyffe
Kenny’s discussion brings up many valid points about the concept of “Walt Disney creativity.” He identifies that a lot of today’s creative and commercial projects borrow significantly from past experiences. Be it sampling song clips or remaking movies, a lot of today’s entertainment takes old entertainment and instills new life into it. This concept is discussed thoroughly in the first chapter of Lessig and identifies the benefits this has upon our society today. I feel an equally interesting question is how the “borrowed creativity” affects the original creator. In most contexts, the new work improves upon old works but also sparks interest in the old. Remakes and reinterpretations of past movies are released all the time, examples being King Kong and almost every horror movie ever made. While these movies do well on their own, they often reinvigorate interest in the older versions as they cause people to look at the evolution of the concept and investigate where the inspiration came from. With the manga/doujinshi scene in Japan, many people may be attracted to purchase a manga upon reading a doujinshi based in the same universe. As such, it is important to identify that making copyright laws more lenient with respect to borrowing ideas not only benefits the public and culture, but also the original creative ideas.
I disagree slightly with Kenny’s second example of video games, though I feel his ideas are close to point. While video games borrow features from one another, the features borrowed are more along the ideas of design conventions than they are with respect to the idea or story being delivered.
I find it especially ironic that one of the assignments for this week, the Invader Zim to Rosa Parks video found on YouTube can no longer be accessed due to copyright infringements claimed by Viacom. The video featured the song by Outkast being played over video footage of Invader Zim. While the video violated both the copyright of Outkast and the TV show Invader Zim, it utilized both venues creative material to make its own combined creative work. Thus, this assignment actually featured a real example of how companies seek to stifle the general publics noncommercial culture.
[edit] Response to Lessig by Kevin Kelly
The way that Lessig opens the preface caught my attention. He quoted David Pogue, by saying that “if you don’t like the Internet’s system, you can always flip off the modem.” That quote brought me in because initially I thought he was agreeing with that statement, and I thought he was an old school loony. Anyone who thinks that in this technological world you can just remove yourself from involvement within the hi-tech world is living in a fantasy. Lessig later clarifies his viewpoint by saying that“[t]here is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet’s effect.”
Throughout the first 30 pages of this book it seems to me that Lessig is in favor of the protection of property, particularly intellectual property. In our modern day and age, the protection of this intellectual property through copyrighting (a process facilitated by the government) is becoming increasingly difficult. Piracy, which has become increasingly more effortless due to the Internet, is the reason for this copyrighting of everything from ideas to tangible or digital goods. The examples of Walt Disney and doujinshi are good examples of what makes this regulation of intellectual property so difficult. The state that our American system in 1930’s and 40’s was actually how the doujinshi market in Japan is right now. This is quite interesting to me, because I enjoy analyzing the different phases of growth of up and coming nations of the world. The most interesting reason for Japan’s lack of prosecution of this illegal market is quoted by Lessig: “We don’t have enough lawyers; [there] just aren’t enough resources to prosecute cases like this.” With the rate of growth of the Japanese economy, these resources should be there within decades, maybe even years. Even though the addition reasons for the lack or prosecution are significant, I believe that in decades, this form of cartooning will be banished from Japan. When nations become thriving modern societies there needs to be increased regulation on the flow of intellectual property.
Lessig continues with saying that “every society has left a bit of its culture free for the taking”. He is saying that within all societies, there is still certain sections of the culture that allow for this free culture of property flow to thrive unchecked. He brings up questions related to how the free the culture actually is, and why these facets of the society still remain. While our society was founded as a ‘free culture’, there needs to be regulations to protect the property of all individuals, and our society is become less and less free. Lessig is walking a fine line throughout these first 30 pages, because he is in favor of the protection of property, but also says that “some things remain free for the taking within a culture, and that freedom is good”. It will be interesting to see if he further defines his stance on what exactly should be free within our current society.
[edit] Response to Kevin Kelly's response by Terry Isabella
Kevin makes some good points in response to Lessig, and I would like to respond to his last statement regarding the things that Lessig believes should be left free in our society. Whether or not Lessig directly states these things, as Kevin stated, is a wait and see, but my impression from the reading is this: Lessig thinks that music that is copyright protected should not be traded over the Internet but bands (local or cover) should be able to perform that music. If some city launches a great new music scene, as Seattle once did, any band from anywhere can interpret and create music of that genre. A book can not be copied and handed out but it can be read to a group or given to your friend after you have read it. We should not be able to pirate a copy of Adobe Illustrator but we can create our own program to do the job. I believe that these are the aspects of intellectual property that he feels should remain free.
[edit] Response to Lessig by David Crolius
The Internet is a development which has changed the way many of us interact. Prior to the days of IM and text messaging we were actually expected to use a phone for calling people instead of texting our friends or taking pictures. The Internet is also a wonderful tool allowing us to access a plethora of information from just about anywhere. With these advances there have come issues as well. The issues Lessig addresses have to deal with the idea of copyrights, intellectual property, and how they relate to creative offshoots of those items under protection. In the examples of Walt Disney and doujinshi comics, an existing licensed idea that “belonged” to someone else was taken and expanded upon. This expansion has led to the enormous popularity of manga comics and their offshoots doujinshi comics in Japan. In Walt Disney’s case the cartoon movie of Steamboat Willie probably had a significant part in Walt Disney becoming the powerful force in entertainment it is today. In our culture today the lines of what belongs to someone else have become blurred. An example within our own popular culture is the lampooning of original films. The Scary Movie series and the recently released Epic Movie are parodies of existing movies. These parodies expand on the original work, possible without the consent of the person or people who “own” that idea. The place we encounter the most talk of piracy and copyright infringement is in the music industry. With the advent of digital music players technology has evolved to the point where music can be shared easily. This has contributed to loss of revenue for the music industry. They have put in place safeguards to guard their content. Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently published an essay criticizing these safeguards. His primary concern is not the copyright issues though. His main issue is compatibility between music services for digital music players. He is proposing measures that would make the transfer of music easier between people with different types of music players. It will be interesting to see how this affects the battle with “piracy”.
[edit] Response to Lessig by Chris Dromms
A lot of the previous responses cited examples from the Lessig reading. Given that as students we are at RPI, I think there is a good example of the copyright issue right on campus that is related to the reading. Because of RPI's large resources of being a technical school, it caused copyright problems with file sharing. This more specifically pertains to music and movies. RPI in the end decided to get a legal service for students to fix the problem. Taking a step back though, this music copyright debate is actually very similar to the discussion of the remediation of print we have been having prior to this. If you really look at the copyright issue surrounding music, a lot of the problem is that people are using less and less CD's and more ipods and computers. Funny enough, this sounds very familiar to the discussion of the remediation of print and the internet taking over. Could it be that we are also experiencing the remediation of the music CD and the copyright issues are a result of the music industry fighting the change?
