Blog 12

RIP:  A Remix Manifesto, Remix Lessig

Both the documentary and Lessig express an idea that Intellectual property laws slow down society by not allowing anyone to touch the intellectual ideas.  The control of creativity by copyright harms health, preventing progress, and benefiting in the documentary Greg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk states that if intellectual property was not copyrighted we could be more advanced with medicine. 

The movie provides an investigation into how culture builds upon culture in the digital age, Lessig pretty much, states the same and how it cannot be stopped.  We build from past cultures and past ideas combining them to create something new to take a further step into the future. 

The documentary showed how certain bands released their album and other works completely free. This approach allows people to innovate from their work to remix it, and eventually to create something new.  Lessig describes Lonely Island as taking this approach of allowing people to take and share and remix their work.  This eventually allowed the group to cross over to a commercial economy (227-28)

I think that they both take on the idea that we all need to share because it will happen either way.  “But when artist want to create for the sharing economy, increasingly they use signs that makes them as members of this economy,  Tools such as the Creative Commons “ Noncommercial” license enable artist to say “take and share my work freely.  Let it become part of the sharing economy.  But if you want to carry this work over to the commercial economy, you must ask me first.  Depending upon the offer, I may or may not say yes.”  (Lessig)