Lessig, L. (2007). Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity [Streaming Video]. TED. Retreived March 22 2011 from: http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

The Lessig video covered some of the issues covered in the Collins readings and formed a strong argument through the use of different historical contexts and examples of the creation and development of media materials.

Lessig uses an example by Susas (? Forgive me if spelling is incorrect) that historically we have had a Read/Write culture (RW), a participatory culture, where songs and stories of the day had been passed down and adapted through generations and that it was with the advent of machines that could now tell these stories and sing these songs to us that we became consumers as we could not talk back or interact with them – thus we became a Read Only culture (RO) which has become indicative of most of the 20th century.

It’s these technological developments which make us address the laws of the day and that we need to sue common sense to ensure these laws are applicable and fair to all parties within a culture thus ensuring no monopolies on culture. Today’s media laws are designed to control and regulate content creations and distribution but are tilted too far in favour of copyright owners and thus produce an uncompetitive marketplace which doesn’t not encourage a culture of development and change. RW culture has been revived recently via digital technologies which enable user driven content which is produced for love and not money; and is indicative of the remix culture of today’s youth who taking existing media and change it into something new.

Lessig shows three examples of what remix culture can do when you allow consumers to use material to produce new meanings out of the material - (Re)Creativity. The remix culture is a product of the reduced barriers of entry financially and technologically and has meant that it is now a societal norm which is accepted amongst their culture even if the law does not agree with their assessment.

Lessig does at this point balance his view point to stress that he is not taking sides with the extremes of media piracy, and nor does he support the extremes of current copyright law which was an excellent point to make as the video could easily be taken out of context at times as being an anti-establishment rant rather than the balanced analysis of the media landscape which I think it is.

He goes on to note that user generated content is new competition for copyrighted material and that in the end the audience will decided what it wants and what it needs, going on to present the idea of new licensing structures to allow the production of this competitive content that would mean it was free for use in a remix culture, and that businesses behind the framework of this free RW culture need to embrace it to enable its growth so more and more quality free content is available to compete with paid content.

He concludes his talk with a couple of key points:

·         Artist choice is the key for new technologies to have the opportunity to develop and grow

·         Generational Changes – RO vs. RW older generation watch TV and new generations make TV; highlighting that new technologies make generations different just as the generation before TV would have thought differently.

·         Finally and importantly Lessig highlights that old media laws applied to an online culture makes new generations live a life where they are constantly living against the laws and seen as folk devils and subject to moral panics.

Lessig like the Collins reading raises some important points in relation to the restrictions being placed on a culture that is subject to the hegemonies of an incumbent media paradigm which is used to creating media and pushing it out to the audience. The problem is that in today’s digitized era this pushed content is easily transformable by technologies now accessible to large sections of society, a society that has been creatively stifled through unfair copyright restrictions that were designed to regulate and centralize distribution of the media content. However online this distribution has been decentralized through many web2.0 platforms and also the mobility of the internet which has meant consumers are now free of time and space but not of the current laws.

I guess if you are breaking one law, you might as well break them all. I guess we are all pirates.

Lessig, L. (2007). Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity [Streaming Video]. TED. Retrieved March 22 2011 from: http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html 

Within the scope of what I understand the MED104 remediation to be  I think possible issues will be the ability for me not to just re-create the original in a different format but to add value to the original work and by providing a new understanding of the original.

This needs to be done in order to argue fair dealing if the value of this content is questioned by the creators of the original and thus is seen as a breach of copyright content. It is thus important for me to assess:

[1] What copyright material I will use in my projects creation

[2] On what grounds I will be able to use this content for my project (i.e. parody or education).

[3] Under what license will I place the remediation project. Will I use copyright or creative commons.

[4] How to effectively acknowledge any copyrighted material used in the creation of the process.

The Collins readings looks at several subjects we have touched on over the preceding weeks of MED104 and starts to bring them together to paint a picture of the current media production and distribution landscape in relation to copyright and fair use.

Collins begins by highlighting that in the current cultural context people for the first time have accesses to media production hardware and software at prices which allow for people who were strictly consumers to become producers, and terms it “prosumerism”. And that is prosumerism which a form of creativity where participants are able to create ‘new’ works which are then easily distributable online through web 2.0 platforms such as  YouTube. I think it is this combination of lower barriers of media production and a relatively free distribution platform for many forms of different media that has thrust copyright into question in the digital age where it is steadily becoming the societal norm to participate and that perhaps that this highlights the generational differences present in society today’s and its attitudes towards media and that perhaps there are two generations at the moment – the push generation (Read Only) and the pull generations (Read Write).

Thus we currently have a situation where most professional content is being created by the Push generation which is using laws relating to media in the offline world and trying to apply them in an online environment as they see this use of copyright to a challenge to their media hegemony as Collins notes “despite a lack of demonsratable economic harm in many cases” and thus use their power in the media to create moral panics thus exacerbating issues and negatively labeling “prosumers” as thieves and pirates to protect their power position and suppress new business models and technologies that pose a threat to their position.

Fair use is supposed to provide balance between these private and public/cultural interests however with old media laws treating digital media still as a real property and that any use breaks intellectual property laws. I agreed with Collins that this should not be the case and that digital media should be treated differently by the law as they are being created within a different cultural context of an increasingly participatory culture.

Collins noted that copyright was originally created to ensure that culturally important works were not subject to monopolies, something that I see having broken down now to protect monopolies with the ever extending period of copyright and was surprised to see that fair use issues extended back on to the 1840s and thus is not a new issue, but seems to be an issue born out of consumerism and commoditization which seem to develop around this time (Bowlby, 1985).

Collins noted that fair use is an essential social utility of copyright and uses a quote from Patry to support this where he notes that fair use encourages “learned men to compose useful books”. This highlighted a key point in Collin’s argument in the support of fair use in that it promotes new thinking on existing ideas and concepts to produce new materials to assist in cultural and societal development, and also highlights that this is not a new phenomenon and has been going on in the media landscape for a long time. The freedom to develop new ideas and concepts has only recently been restricted due to the ever extending lengths of copyright designed to appease economic concerns in a capitalist society where infinite economic growth is required - appeasements which are at logger head with the participatory culture of today and show to me that economic concerns are currently emphasized over cultural ones and that many “infringements” could well be argued to be fair sue but due to the perceived economic and political power of copyright holders they are not challenged for fear of losing.

Whilst I do not believe having no copyright laws and blatantly stealing content is right I think the need to allow a culture to develop using the communicative and creative means of the day is extremely important. Some kind of licensing is required to supply authenticity to the reader which is important when considering that anyone can post anything on the web whether it is correct or incorrect.

References:

Collins, S. (2008). Recovering fair use.  M/C Media Culture 11 (6). Retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/105

Bowlby, R. (1985). Introduction in Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola , Bowlby, Rachel , 1985 , 1-17. Retrieved from http://www.library.mq.edu.au/reserve/index.php?command=searchCourse&coursenotes=0&exams=0&ereadings=0&course=sgy120