#9 - Remix: Intro & Chapter 1

                I would say that Lawrence Lessig’s key argument in the Introduction of Remix, is that copyright protection as it stands now is stifling creativity and is harmful to the amateur creator well beyond what is necessary to protect the interests of established artists.  The first example he uses for his argument is a mom who uploaded a video of her baby to YouTube, in which one of Prince’s songs could be faintly heard.  Not only did the production company (Universal Music Group) demand that the video be removed from YouTube, they brought up the threat of legal action when she pursued the matter.  As Lessig points out it is highly unlikely that this video could cut into the artist’s or producer’s profit margin at all, which raises the issue of whether this law serves any beneficial function.  Lessig goes on to point out other ways in which copyright law stifles the creative expression of many (whom he refers to as “collateral damage”), and the benefits that can be claimed from freer uses of creative content, using the example of songs released under a Creative Commons license.

                In Chapter One, Lessig posits the idea of two types of culture: Read/Write (RW) culture in which average people not only consume culture, but also “add to the culture that they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them”, and Read Only (RO) culture in which people tend to passively consume culture rather than interacting creatively with it.  RW culture, Lessig argues is one that encourages amateur creative endeavor, and is “flat”, that is it’s shared person to person and is thus more democratic.  By contrast RO culture encourages passive acceptance of professionally created content on the part of the consumer and discourages active creativity.  This distinction between the two types of culture is important to Lessig’s argument because the sort of “remix” behavior that he is attempting to advance and protect falls squarely within the ideals of the RW culture.  By outlining the cultural benefits of RW and disadvantages of RO, Lessig shows us why this topic is important and how it is affecting everyday people.  While people in a RO culture are passive recipients of ideas from a very small fraction of the population, those in a RW culture are actively engaged in the creative process and create a richer cultural experience.  However, Lessig also points out that this need not be an either or proposition; a society can have elements of both types of culture and still by creatively enriched (p. 34-5).

                Also in Chapter One Lessig explores the beginnings of copyright laws as they exist today.  To explore this past he focuses on the early 1900’s and on John Philip Sousa, a composer who argued for more stringent copyright protections than existed at the time.  Sousa was displeased by the rise of mechanically reproduced music (phonographs, player pianos, etc.)  in part due to the fact that he was not entitled to payment for these “copies” (I cynically suspect that this was his primary motive, but perhaps I am being unfair).  Lessig points out a number of times that Sousa states that mechanically reproduced music was responsible for a decline in casual, amateur music activities.  According to Sousa, people were so enamored of the “infernal machines” that traditional amateur musical expression and appreciation was being destroyed.  Aside from topical relevancy, I suspect that Lessig brings up Sousa because the very laws that he argued would encourage amateur creativity are currently responsible for stifling it.  Additionally, there is the fact that Sousa’s “infernal machines” are now the major instrument for amateur creativity and cultural interaction.  The quandary of copyright protection now is sort of a dark mirror of what Sousa argued was occurring in his day; the amateur is still suppressed only now it is the machines that can free us from the laws that were meant to promote creativity.