Remix, part two

In Part Two of Remix by Lessig, he discusses the hybrid economy and the positive effects such an economy could have on the internet in terms of copyright and remixing. He discusses three types: community spaces, with the most familiar probably being Craigslist; collaboration spaces, with Yahoo! Answers as an example; and finally communities, such as the Creative commons, which Lessig assisted in creating and popularizing.

One thing that Lessig discussed in this chapter, which I found interesting, was “sharecropping.” This refers to corporations forcing the remixer to give up all rights to his or her creativity since that person has only remixed the work and supposedly not created anything new. I think such an idea is detrimental to culture and harmful to creativity. If we encourage thinking such as this, we are still allowing the “experts” in RO culture to control cultural production by placing their stamps on anything that is created, even remixes.

Legitimizing the remix is an important step for us to take as a society and culture. First of all, we all do it on some level. I allow students to create remixes in class for final projects, if they are interested. When I taught 120 here and 101 at Mankato, I had many students create remixes for their final projects. Many of these were creative and I don’t see why those students should not have any rights to the work they accomplished.

In our society where the internet and its spaces are truly king, we must recognize the changing face of creativity. I also think remixes have been around for generations, as I think literature has had its share of remixed material. Collaboration itself has made up a large part of literary culture, though literary culture does not always like to admit to having a high level of collaboration. (Think of the writer’s workshop, for example, and how groups of writers have often worked together, just as how any other creative group networks and shares ideas.)

Questions:

·      Lessig at one point says one of the goals of his book is to inspire for more creativity (130). In what ways is he doing this besides through the obvious way of seeing remix as a form of creativity?