Just finished reading Lawrence Lessig’s Remix. In the book, Lessig calls for changes to how we deal with conflict between commercial interests of content owners (music, video, …) and the emerging creativity using these content in mashups and remixes. He makes the argument for the advent of the RW culture, the new hybird economy, and he calls for changes to the copyright laws.
Lessig describes the resurgience of the RW (read/write) culture, where with the advent of internet technologies, we now can mashup and remix software, pictures, text, video, music, and other content created by others into new creations. RW culture contrasts with the RO (read only) culture that predominates in the 20th century prior to the internet, with creations like movies on tape, music on CD, software on DVD, etc. This, of course, runs counter to the economic interests of owners of (commercial) content and their lawyers.
Lessig highlights the conflict in the way we exchange content via 2 economies::
- Commercial economy, where money or “price” is a central term of the normal exhcange. Netflix, Amazon, and Google are 3 commercially successful enterprises based on the Internet, due to the Long Tail principle, which says that as the cost of inventory falls, the efficient range of inventory rises. As transaction costs fall to zero, the efficient inventory rises to infinity.
- Sharing economy, where content are exchanged for the purpose of relationships, and when money comes in, poisons the relationships. Examples include open source projects, where people are sharing their work without the exchange of money, for the benefits of the greater good or creation.
Lessig advocates the internet now allows for the hybrid of the 2 economies. He pointed to Warner Brother, who has began to adopt this, has benefited from this approach. By being less restrictive with its intellectual property, allowing Harry Potter fans to uses images in their fan sites, it strengthened it’s fan’s loyalty to the brand.
Lessig says that the copyright laws need changing, as they do not address the new world as the result of the internet. He advocates 5 key changes:
- Deregulate amateur creativity, allow for remixes.
- Clear title and reinstitute opt-in copyright, where the copyright owner has to actively re-register after a period of time, in order to retain title to the work.
- Simplify the law.
- Decriminalize the copy.
- Decriminalize file sharing.
Very valid, very logical. This would surely take a long time for the world to accept and implement.
Copyright (c) 2009 by Waiming Mok
