#9 Copyright Catastrophe

     In the introduction to Lawrence Lessig’s book, Remix, he points how incredibly absurd and “out of date” copyright laws are and how companies today are able to take credit for what they had a hand in creating. Lessig shows this in a very real way and goes into an example of how that type of authority presses charges in the places that sell Girl Talk music but not pursue Girl Talk himself. If Girl Talk was prosecuted by the vast amount of artists whose work he has used it would be taking away from the creativity of what he made those songs into the art that he creates. Doc Adam touched on this by saying that no song is original in its self.  Lessig gives one last example of how one of those ‘groups’ went after a mother that created a homemade video and posted it to the internet which was obviously made for her child. The prosecution ended up costing the ‘group’ more than what it was worth to prosecute the women. Another example of how things are getting out of hand with copyright laws and how companies are dealing with them in a ridiculous way.

RW (Read/Write) - ordinary citizens “read” their culture by listening to it or by reading representations of it...add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them. They do this by using the same tools the professional uses...” (28).

RO (Read/Only) - “a culture less practiced in performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable (think: couch) with simple consumption” (28).

     The simple difference between these two is that one (RO) is just for experiencing and not changing or expanding on what that thing may be. The other (RW) is out there for people to experience and have the ability to put their own twist and creativity into to make something new and original. The reason Lessig brings this up is because it is basically the bulk of what he is talking about. They are two underlying labels that are put onto songs, etc. that say just listen to it, or listen to it and play around with it and see what best works for your, the viewers, personal taste and creativity.

     Lessig uses Sousa because of Sousa’s own battle against copying music back in 1906.  Sousa was a critic of copyright law in America and we was also a proclaimed composer who made a good chunk of change being a composer with copyrights on his work.  He had an insight that the voice of machines would be the downfall to music as we know it. His point was that people would eventually live in a RO culture, people would be able to listen, but not expand on the subject and participate in its entirety. Sousa is a good person for Lessig to bring up because of what he had to say about the copyright problems and what he has done for them.