2: Remix

Harvard law professor and “copyright warrior” Lawrence Lessig in his (free-of-charge!) book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, advocates for the relaxation of copyright and intellectual property laws on the grounds that they strangle the development of creative culture. The primary focus of Part I is an exposition on Lessig’s conception of ‘Read-Only (RO)’ culture versus ‘Read-Write (RW)’ culture — the difference between the two succinctly described as social and legal permission of the remix. In RO culture, stringent intellectual property laws prevent reasonable and creative reuse of copyrighted material, regardless of the scope of distribution or possible profit, whereas in RW culture, Lessig envisions an active community of modern citizens characterized by their reuse of digital media to make something new. The potential benefits to a society engaged in RW culture are easily realized in a number of illustrative examples and in simple terms, which sort of ‘gives away’ Lessig’s intent to reach a wide, non-academic audience; he is trying to engage the public in a discussion that, up until recently, has mostly consisted of the efforts of RO advocates to halt the RW shift.

I live with a jazz musician — one who performs and records in an effort to begin a career — with whom I’ve had the conversation about Internet piracy. [ASIDE: Go see her.] It’s a difficult discourse, to be sure; not only are the financial rewards unhappy for 97% of performing artists, but with a high failure rate and hours of marketing and practice, it’s easy to imagine her frustration at the availability of digital content. If one person buys a CD from her, technology makes possible a scenario in which she makes no other sales — why buy, when P2P will suffice? And while the compact disc is a poor symbol of the immense artistic effort required to produce music, a digital copy devalues the work even further. This, I get.

My perspective has always been that our model for content distribution is twisted and monopolistic, but we’ve grown used to it. I believe in the possibly contentious notion that artists are a community that has been throttled by American business enterprise, deluded into thinking the economic value of their work is any greater than your average plumber. For every musician that “makes it big”, there are plenty who don’t — only because their work doesn’t have popular appeal as judged by EMI or Sony Entertainment. The plight of the “unsung” (hah, it’s a pun!) artist, then, is to languish with no major outlet for distribution, having bought fully into the system that record labels are selling.

The truth of the matter is, like Lessig says, change is coming. The end of analog media means the beginning of a social Renaissance. Lawmakers and big businesses have long set the price of admission for culture, and soon, they’ll be experiencing competition by way of a true free market: the Internet. A frightening prospect, to be sure. What if anyone could be an artist? Even the part-timers? I guess, then, the view of music and movies as economic goods, a view which has been forced on artists and appreciators, would start to unravel. It’s unclear to me what that means in terms of the state of the art; for example, how do we pay artists? Given that uncertainty, could we expect an influx of artists or an exodus in favor of career prospects? I, for one, am a big fan of the open music model (OMM), i.e. something like Spotify, but with a more robust financial foundation for artists. They, after all, have a career to think of.