In Lawrence Lessig’s book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, Lessig details our ever escalating "copyright war" and how we should address copyright law going forward as new digital technologies develop.
Lessig suggests we live in a "remix culture." With the digital technologies available to combine, transform, and manipulate photos, music, stories, and other information, remixing is now easier than ever. And that’s Lessig’s primary point: People are naturally doing what new technologies encourage them to do (Nook location 12). The very nature of digital media makes it so simple to "remix" by reformulating content and presenting it as something new or different.
It’s creative and fun to take photos and video clips and re-arrange them. But Lessig poses some serious questions. What effect will our copyright war have on children? Will it change how they think about normal behavior? How will their behavior toward copyright law change as they continue to download and "remix?" How will they look at other laws in general? And are we too quick to criminalize kids from the get-go for utilizing digital technologies that are made so easily available to them?
It’s no secret that new digital technologies have changed how we think about access. Lessig agrees this is a pivotal issue. He uses Amazon as an example. Amazon gathers consumer information about what we like and are likely to buy, then tailors products to our specific preferences. This is hardly any different than what platforms such as Facebook and Google allow advertisers and third parties to do right now.
Lessig compares the passive read-only culture to the more reciprocal read/write culture we’re familiar with today when it comes to dealing with digital technology. He says as the read-only culture has "evolved in the digital world, technologies have given the copyright owner an ever-increasing opportunity to control precisely how copyrighted content is consumed" (Nook location 84). Or as he says, "Every time you use a creative work in a digital context, the technology is making a copy" (Nook location 85). In the digital world, he says, any use triggers copyright law because any ordinary use is a copy. On the other hand, the very nature of read/write culture suggests any rewriting in a digital context produces a copy and violates copyright law.
Lessig also hits on the Internet as "the age of the hybrid" (Nook Location 137), building on aspects of commercial and sharing economies. He says that "a hybrid that respects the rights of the creator -- both the original creator and the remixer -- is more likely to survive than one that doesn't" (Nook location 185). He offers as one example the Creative Commons he helped found that offers legal and technological tools for creators to effectively share their digital content and helps offer a balance between the reality of the Internet and of copyright laws.
Lessig poses the other questions, "In a world in which technology begs all of us to create and spread creative work differently from how it was created and spread before, what kind of moral platform will sustain our kids when their ordinary behavior is deemed criminal? Who will they become? What other crimes will to them seem natural?" (Nook location 11). Lessig suggests that because kids are now growing up in an age where digital literacy is the new literacy, they’ll be hard-pressed to understand why "remixing" isn’t necessarily OK.
Lessig outlines several suggestions for how to change (NOT abolish!) copyright laws in ways that will allow for more creative thought and expression on the Web, including simplifying copyright laws and regulating use of copies while not criminalizing copies themselves. Indeed digital copyright laws will inevitably have to change as the digital landscape continues to.
I believe the world of remixing and copyright provides a very slippery slope. I’ve downloaded music illegally in the past. However, I would never try to claim another author’s work as my own. I suppose the fear here is as easy as it is for people to manipulate content online and represent it as something new, where are you supposed to drawn the line? I think it’s each person’s responsibility to do that. But I also believe that just like we teach kids not to run red lights or to obey the speed limit, it’s going to become equally important to teach them about copyright issues concerning the web … what’s appropriate and what’s legal.
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