Objectives:

• Become acquainted with copyright as a historic, cultural and economic paradigm and its value and pertinence to creative works.
• Explore the changing nature of copyright in the context of “Remix Culture” and the “Fifth World”
• Examine your own and others values and paradigms of ownership and authorship of cultural media.
• Evaluate the meanings of real and fake and examine their intersection with personal and cultural identity and authenticity.

Reflection about the remix culture reading:

In the reading about the comparison of RO culture and RW culture, the author pointed out that many people do not know about how the law works, and the RW culture is promoting economic values that are noteworthy. RW businesses such as Wikipedia received mixed criticisms from people because on the one hand, they represent the amateur culture but on the other hand, they are killing the traditional businesses such as information providers.

 

The complicated issues in the remix culture and its products such as the Wikipedia are not caused directly by the legal system, but by the difficulties in executing the relevant laws such as the copyright laws.

 

I think that it is very important to recognize the significant value of the copyright system. The copyright system ensures both RO and RW participants to be able to get the economic and social benefits created by their hard works. The copyright system prevents people from the idea of stealing other people’s original works and helps people to better recognize the values of their works.

 

However, copyright is not well recognized by many people. Just as Lessig pointed out in the interview scripts, it is important not only for people who participate in peer to peer sharing services to realize that copyrights are crucial to ensure a prosper development of the society and technology, but also for governmental agencies that have control over copyright laws to ensure better reinforcements. Copyright system could not be executed simply by mentioning about it, actions need to be taken from multiple organizations in order to make copyright a serious, well recognized system and protect people who create things. Nowadays, almost everyone create stuff!

 

Copyright is about clearly realizing the intellectual property of other people and sometimes people might think that copyrights limit their choices in inventing. I believe that this limitation could be mitigated by making copyright a more flexible and realistic system. A good copyright system should develop simultaneously with the contemporary technology and other product systems.

 

I believe that the current copyright regulations could be strengthened by constantly amending the provisions to ensure a flexible system.

 

Reflection:

Copyright is about being conscious about the inner value of intellectual properties and how the valuing of intellectual properties could really help us to advance in our mental developments. Art, as a form of intellectual property, is also tightly knitted with the development of the copyright system. Through the reading and the clip about the interview with Lessig, I got to understand how the current copyright system is lacking of flexibility and how we should really push some advocacy in establishing a better system that could actually be reinforced and executed.

 

Future:

I will keep an eye on the legal affairs within intellectual property and I think that I will be focusing on discovering and discoursing the consequences of different legal policies.

 

My remix collage for your appreciation: