Friday, April 22, 2011

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)

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Sharing/Commercial Economy Blog 11


Describe the difference between a sharing and a commercial economy. Why does this distinction matter to Lessig's main argument?

“Sharing Economy of all the possible terms of exchange within a sharing economy, the simgle term that isn’t appropriate is money.  You can demand that a friend spend more time with you, and the relationship is still a friendship.  If you demand that he pay you for the time you spend with him, the relationship is no longer a friendship” (118)
. 
Some quotes that explain what “sharing economy” is:
 Money in the sharing economy is not just inappropriate; it is poisonous (119).  

“…access to culture is regulated not by price, but by a complex set of social relations” (145).  “relations are insulted by the simplicity of price” (145).

“-the one way in which it cannot be defined is in terms of money” (146). 

“they establish relationships, and draw upon those relationships” (146). 

“Sometimes these motivations are “me-regarding”- the individual participates in the sharing economy because it benefits him or other.” (151).  

Why is important:
“It benefits the community in many different fields: Information about the market, computer resources to make VOIP work better, the network effects from a popular network. The source is shared independent of price” (154).  It helps the community grow and open new windows to new innovation. 
He talks about his examples of open source and shared technologies; “have increased the role of (sharing) production” (176). 

Commercial Economy economy in which money or “price” is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange.  His example:
Local store:
You buy the latest Lovett CD for $18.  The exchange is defined in terms of the price.  This does not mean price is the only term, or even the most important term.  But it does mean that there is nothing peculiar about price being a term.  There’s nothing inappropriate about insisting upon that cash, or making access to the product available only in return for cash (118).  “helping  out? Is not just rare in a commercial economic.  It is downright weird (119).  

Here are some quotes from Lessigt hat explains what a “commercial economy” is:

“Price is how things are negotiated in a commercial economy” (120).

“The business of business is to make money” (120). 

Where we’re not insulted when someone mentions money, where we meter the relationship with price, then we’re within a “commercial economy” (121).

“The market is the engine that drives this commercial economy; if well designed (meaning regulated to protect participants from force of fraud). The market is an extraordinary technology for producing and spreading wealth” (121).

Why is important:
The internet is a commercial economy; “the internet has caused an explosion in the opportunities for business to make money by making old businesses work better” (121).
“Also has made possible new businesses that before the Net weren’t even conceivable” (121).
“….this new bit of social infrastructure offers a staggering potential for growth and innovation” (122).  


Friday, April 1, 2011

Blog 10 ReeeMIx!


After reading Lawrence section on his favorite clip from “Read My Lips”, created by Soderberg I had to check out his work.  I wanted to check out the mixed Hitler song “Born to Be alive” that resulted in a lawsuit, though this was not his favorite mix I just wanted to check it out to see why it turned to a lawsuit.  When I got to the page on Youtube I was checking out other mixes of Hitler and I clicked on “Hitler Freestyle” it featured clip that was taken from an Adolf Hitler 1934: Closing Ceremony-Triumph of Will speech ant it is remixed with a

The video clip starts with a black screen and the title of the ceremony and as it plays you hear Hitler saying “Es spricht der Fuihrer” then the Biggie and Tupac Live Freestyle start playing.  The clip is a parody to Hitler and Biggie more than Tupac the author meshes up two very influential figures.  The author creates something different by meshing two different things together to make something new. 

tage presence in front of Hitler and his body language match the lyrics of the freestyle.

Blog 9 Remix Intro.

First, describe what you see as Lessig's key argument in the Introduction.
On Remix by Lawrence Lessig, he argues “the copyright wars” through his examples of artist and creators that were targeted by large corporations that set out to make examples of them.  He states that the extreme of regulation that copyright law has become makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for wide range of creativity that any free society-if it thought about it for just a second-would allow to exist, legally (18).  
Second, describe the difference RW and RO culture and why it matters to Lessig's argument.

The difference between RW and RO culture:

“Read/Write” culture in Sousa’s world ordinary citizens “read” their culture by listening to it or by reading representations of it.  This reading, however, is not enough.  Instead, they (or at least the “young people of the day”) add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them.  They do this re-creating using the same tools the professional uses-the “pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos”- as well as tools given to them by nature-“vocal cords.”

“Read/Only culture: a culture less practiced in performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable (think: couch) with simple consumption (28).  A culture of recording, or performances captured in some tangible form, and then duplicated and sold by an increasingly concentrated “recording” industry ….player –piano rolls, then quickly phonographs” (29)

It matter to Lessig because of the competition they created a competition that drove products to be in higher demand creating better quality of products at a cheaper price.  He states “by the twenty-first century, this competition had produced extraordinary access to a wide range of culture (30).  RO had come to define what most of us understood culture, or at least “popular culture” to be. 

Third, why does Lessig use Sousa?

Lawrence used Sousa because Sousa was romanticizing culture in a way that might remind the student of American history of Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson romanized the yeoman farmer.  He would sicken by the modern corporate farm that has displaced d his yeoman hero. Sausa’s take on culture was similar to that of Jefferson.  His fear was not that culture, or the actual quality of the music produced in a culture, would be less.  His fear was that people would be less connected to, and hence practiced in, creating that culture.  Amateurism, to this professional, was a virtue-not because it produced great music, but because it produced a musical culture: a love for, and an appreciation of, the music he re-created, respect for the music he played, and hence a connection to a democratic culture (27).  He celebrated a “Read/Write” culture and feared that this RW culture would disappear, be replaced by- “Read/Only” culture (28).  He was also was a critic of the 1906 relatively lax United States copyright system (23).