Let me be honest,
I rarely get worked up over controversial issues. I have always been able to rationalize conflicting sides of
hot topics like abortion, the death penalty, and taxes. After watching RiP: A Remix Manifesto, I was frustrated and confused as to why our
government, one that boasts ideals such as “freedom”, would punish its citizens
for taking old works of art, music, and entertainment and making them new
again. What’s the reasoning behind
this punishment? Greed. The government cannot wipe out all
file-sharing and remixing on the Internet, so they have to punish it. I can understand protecting someone’s intellectual
property to a certain point, but after that, all greedy reasoning becomes null
and void.
Up until the
Internet, the unspoken supposition was that “people couldn’t simply
self-assemble” any given task either fell under jurisdiction of the state or of
a competing market (Shirky, 2008).
The Internet completely flipped this assumption on its back. The Internet was created for the sole purpose
of sharing information, proving (at least for a short time) that people could
self-assemble without the help or governance of markets or managers. Not only were these people just assembling, but they were
also exchanging information at a rate that was impossible via any other
method. Users were creating forums
to exchange information and tips on their interests, building off of each other
with their swapping of ideas. All
these forms suggest that “structured aggregation of individual interests and
talents can create a kind of value that is hard to replicate with ordinary
institutional forms, and impossible to create at such low cost” (Shirky 2008). The ability to publish ideas and trade ideas slipped through
the fingers of the elites and fell into the open palms of the public, or more
specifically, anyone with a computer and Internet connection (Shirky, 2008). When
businesses rushed in to capitalize on what had happened, there was something of
a problem, in that the content aspect of the web, the cultural side, was
functioning rather well without a business plan (Lainer, 2010). Since businesses couldn’t eliminate all
file sharing and information exchange over the Internet, the next best thing
was to punish it, an example of “the past attempting to control the future”
(Cross, 2008).
The government
heavily relied on the idea of “intellectual property”, which has been present
since the 19th century (Cross, 2008). Basically, if someone comes up with an idea, and copyrights
it, you can’t use it without their permission, which usually includes a fee. Unfortunately, Disney took it a step
further by convincing the government to create the “Mickey Mouse” law, where a
copyright lasts for the life of the creator, plus 70 years (Cross, 2008). Since the creator is dead, they cannot
profit from their ideas, thus it’s the license holders who are making money off
an idea they didn’t even create.
This is wrong. I watched a
TED talks by Larry Lessig about how creativity is being strangled by the law,
he states that recreating has become democratized, it’s the literacy for this
generation (Lessig, 2007).
I believe the
world would be a better place if copyright laws became less rigid. If artists and creators agreed to
embrace the idea of a creative common and chose that their work be made
available freely, it could be offered freely for non-commercial use, but not
for commercial use. Cory Doctrow,
a science fiction writer who embraces the Creative Common, states “making my
books available for free increase the number of sales I get” (Doctrow). Two actions a reader might take to
create this better world would be, take something that you are good at, and
publish it on the Internet for free.
The second thing you could do is take something someone else has put on
the Internet and remix it to make it your own. This would begin to create a public domain that creativity
feeds off of.
Sources
Cross, D.
(Producer), & Gaylor, B. (Director). (November 2008). RiP!: A Remix Manifesto [Motion Picture]. Canada: National Film
Board of Canada.
Lainer, J.
(2010). You are not a Gadget (pp.
3-23). New York: Alfred Knopf.
Shirky, C.
(2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power
of Organizing without Organization (pp.47-80). New York: Penguin Group.
I couldn’t find
how to cite case studies or TEDtalks videos so here are the links:
Doctrow, C. [Case
Study] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/Cory_Doctorow
Lessig, L.
[TEDtalks] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs
