Lessig: Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
My
senior year at Miami I took a business ethics capstone course. We were
assigned a large project based on the issues of intellectual property,
copyrights, trademarks, etc. We had to make a handbook guiding how our
company would implement measures to protect our company's intellectual
property. I learned a great deal about the legal issues with copyright,
but it made sense. At the time I was planning to go to law school.
Fast forward to teaching for 3 years. Everything I
created while teaching disregarded intellectual property. I shared it
all for free, uploading it to lesson plan exchange portals online. I did
this knowing it would benefit students, even if they weren't mine.
Students were my top priority, not retaining rights to a lesson or
activity I'd spent awhile creating and honing based on student
reactions. Every now and then throughout teaching I stopped to think
about the irony of being so stringent with intellectual property issues
and how teaching disregarded that. As such I found Remix to be fascinating. It mixed both aspects: the legality and the learning issues.
The
law truly limits the benefits that come from RW culture. I'd never
thought of it until Lessig mentioned it, but why is there such a
discrepancy between using text and using media in RW culture? Lessig's
use of his friend Ben introduced this well. I think nothing of quoting
from a text as long as I give credit. It makes me think of my distance
education videos. I thought nothing of quoting from Universal Principles of Design as long as I cited what I used. When it came to using images or music in them, I
was paranoid. Even when I found something that was clearly marked with a
Creative Commons license, I was wary. But a fundamental component of
our education system deals with creating and applying. Think about
Bloom's Taxonomy (There's a link in my 10.27.11 post). If a student can
create something, she demonstrates that she understands a concept. The
same goes for being able to apply a concept discussed in class to
something else. However, she can only legally create using something
that isn't her own with text. Other forms of media are an entirely
different picture. It makes no sense!
To me this is a matter of certain industries inability to adapt.
They thought they were in control and failed to account for changes in
media distribution and consumption. Think about Lessig's example of the
2007 Academy Awards. He wanted to watch two of his friends win their
Oscars, but because he was in Germany was unable to. He tried every
legal way imaginable to do that. He looked at the Academy Awards
website. It didn't provide any access to watching the ceremony. iTunes
didn't have it, even though Lessig was willing to pay to watch it. Enter
the scandalously illegal YouTube streaming. It offered the awards
ceremony, allowing Lessig to watch his friends receive their rewards
(45). When there isn't a legal avenue that gives access to media you
want, you'll turn to illegal ones. I see that as an industry failure.
Something needs to change. Lessig has it right when he says, "My sense
is that digital technology will enable market support for a much wider
range of 'free' content than anyone expects now...and digital
technologies will continue to resist models that depend upon the heavy
policing by its owners to protect against 'unauthorized use'" (47).
A final note: It should come as no surprise that I'm not
the biggest fan of Henry Jenkins' work. I mentioned in an earlier post
that I was unimpressed with his long-winded writing style. It proved
tedious to read. The exasperation that came from his writing style took
away from valuable points he was making. Lessig's use of Jenkins
throughout Remix demonstrated that Jenkins has some excellent points to make. For me, at least, those got lost when reading Jenkins firsthand.
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