appendix to reflection post nr. 6

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Copyright, Lawrence Lessig

I’ve been thinking about the Lessig book again and there is something I kind of stumbled over when I listened to my ipod. It is the fact, that copyright law uses the word “copy” which means reproducing the original. When the law was made, there weren’t any problems with that, because most people didn’t have the possibility to copy things, so that the law didn’t regulate everyday people, but rather professionals. But with the increasing of technology it became much easier to produce a copy. Lessig gives this example: “When you “read” an electronic book, the machine is copying the text of the book from your hard drive, or from a hard drive on a network, to the memory of the computer. […] When you play a CD on your computer, the recording gets copied into memory on its way to your headphones or speakers. No matter what you do, your actions trigger the law of copyright.” (p. 98-99) Whereas “in the physical world, copyright law gives the copyright owner of a book no legal control over how many times you read a book. That is because when you read a book in real space, that “reading” does not produce a copy.” (p. 99) This historical shift in the law now regulates ordinary citizens like you and me.

I’ve been thinking about that and am wondering now whether listening to music on my ipod is actually triggering copyright law. From what Lessig said: yes and that feels kind of weird, because it’s not as if I copied the music on purpose, the copy is made without me really realising it. So if I buy a CD from the store, import it to my computer and from my computer to my ipod, I produce two copies, so that I’ve already broken copyright law twice! And even if I have bought the CD legally and purchased the right to listen to that music! I could always claim it to be “fair use”, but still, as “fair use” is not an actual law, this still remains tricky.

And what about parties? What if someone brings his ipod along to a private party, playing music over the speaker to everybody? That would certainly be against copyright law as well. But who is to blame or let’s better say who is triggering copyright law in this case? The person the ipod belongs to? Everybody who listens to the music? The person who owns the speakers over which the music is played loudly to everybody? This kind of makes criminals out of us all, without us actually being aware of it.

reflection post nr. 6

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Copyright, Lawrence Lessig, reflection post, Remix, research

Lawrence Lessig: Remix – Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy (2008) p.1-105

Lawrence Lessig is a professor for law at Stanford law school. He is not against copyright, but sees certain disadvantages in the law towards what he calls RW. He uses the term RW (read – write) to clarify his idea about Remix culture. In this culture you read/listen/watch something and are able to respond to it, by remixing it for example (there are other ways of responding, e.g. in a blog there is the possibility to leave a comment to a blog entry). The contrary to RW is RO (read – only), in which the audience is expected to only consume the art. Lessig thinks both those cultural forms necessary, but sees RW culture oppressed by the current law. In his book he argues why RW culture is so important for us. His two main reasons are: communication and education. Through remixing readymade material one can communicate a new point, because “their meaning comes not from the content of what they say; it comes from the references, which is expressible only if it is the original that gets used.” (p.74)

Something I found very interesting while reading his book is the difference he points out between written work and none written work. Nobody thinks of asking permission for quoting written work (I don’t send Mr. Lessig an email, asking whether I can use quotes from his book for my reading reflection), but when it comes to quoting something none written: “[…] the norms governing them today are very different.” (p. 53). Lessig sees one reason in the fact that writing is something that is taught to everyone, while filmmaking or record making used to be the domain of professionals and has only become more and more popular with amateurs, as the techniques to do so were developed, became better with time and became also better accessible. But Lessig thinks that quoting in none written work should be allowed as well, as it offers a wide range of creativity. He talks about some examples to emphasise this point, one is from the artist Johan Söderberg: “As Johan Söderberg says, “To me, it is just like cooking. In your cupboard in your kitchen you have lots of different things and you try to connect different tastes together to create something interesting.” The remix artist does the same thing with bits of culture found in his digital cupboard.” (p. 71) And I totally agree with Lawrence Lessig in that point. Remixing has become such a big part of our culture and offers the possibility to parody/critique/analyse the original source, to communicate a certain point of view, to make people think, that it would be a great loss, if laws continued to forbid and oppress it.