Copyright is a concept that is well known amongst our society today. There are so many different regulations and rules adjacent to this issue, that it seems people might know what the overall concept is, but have poor educated on how serious the issue of copyright infringement truly is.
Copyright is defined as the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.: works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 50 years after his or her death.
Lawrence Lessig, author of the book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, is an American academic activist, who is best known as an advocate for reducing restrictions on copyright and trademark disputes. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, was first published in the United States by the Penguin Press in 2008 and also published in Great Britain in 2008 as well.
In the first part of the book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, a woman named Stephanie Len’s was fighting for her right to keep up a 30 second video up of her adorable eighteen-month-old-son dancing across her kitchen floor to the song by Prince called, “Lets Go Crazy.” Little did she know that this 30-second cute video of her son dancing would entail a $150,000 copyright infringement fine against Universal Music Group. Does this seem fair? Breaking the law by posting a video of your son on YouTube. By not understanding or knowing the proper guidelines and regulations to Copyrighting Stephanie Len found herself in legal dispute. Watching the video you can see that their was no harm in the making of the recording, and Stephanie was unaware she was doing something illegal. No one in his or her right mind would think after watching this video their would be a free source of the song “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince illegally downloading amongst millions and million of people.
As the book goes on Lessig begins to talk about his argument about illegal downloading and the culture of remixing. It allows individuals to creativity create something. He later on talks about the new policies that have taken place over illegal downloading and copyright and found that file sharing in fact has not stopped, it has increased the amount of bootlegs (make, distribute, or sell (illicit goods, computer software, or recordings, illegally.)
What our policy makers have done over the last decade has not actually stopped file sharing; it has not actually helped a lot of artists; it has not spurred a wide range of innovation. All it has done with certainty is raise a generation of “pirates.”
If you ever want to use copyrighted material legally you must get “explicit” permission from the company holding the rights to the material. The book follows an excerpt explaining the ability for “perfect access” saying,
“perfect access (meaning the ability to get whatever you want whenever you want it) will seem obvious. And when it seems obvious, anything that resists that expectation will seem ridiculous. Ridiculous, in turn, makes many of us willing to break the rules that restrict access. Even the good become pirates in a world where the rules seem absurd.”
Sadly, this is true in every way. People are not willing to wait and access permission the right way. We as a society are so used to having access to information at any second through our smart phones to computers. Our society is lazy, and by being lazy people are willing to break the law in order to get what they want, for example downloading illegal music.
After reading this first part of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, I found all the stories and different real world examples very interesting and intriguing. I found this website called Online Piracy in Numbers, and found some startling facts. About 70% of online users find nothing wrong with online piracy, 98% of data transferred using P2P networks is copyrighted. These were only some of the startling facts. By this Lessig would agree and feel that our society does not have the proper knowledge and education about illegal downloading and the serious penalties that can arise from it. In terms of the scenario I brought up earlier in my paper in terms of Universal Music Group and Stephanie Len’s, I believe that it was absolutely ridiculous. You barely can even hear the song in the background, and she has no intent of breaking the law what so ever. Policy makers and corporations need to stop focusing on the harmless situations like this and need to focus on larger issues in educated people on this huge problem.
Sadly, I do not see illegal downloading and copyright infringement stopping anytime soon, how do you feel about this issue?
XOXO
Jordi Carroll
Very well written article. I actually do see illegal downloading and copyright infringement ending fairly soon. The reason I believe so is that over the course of the last couple of decades, content producers have been working on freemium models as well as models to reward content producers. For example, Spotify is a freemium service (free and supported with ads) that allow users to listen to music without having to pay. Users, can of course pay for a premium service at a very low cost. Also, torrent host sites have been imposed with many regulations making it more difficult to torrent. In video piracy, sites like Hulu have helped reduce the amount of tv shows downloaded as well. It’s only a matter of time, before content providers find a freemium model or a model to reward content providers for their goods. Of course, this is always difficult to do with paid software: however, I think for tv shows, movies, and music, we should over the next few years see a massive reduction in the amount of infringment.
This is a well structured post, but you need to do a better job of proofreading.