Unit 9: Remix
The TED talk featuring Lawrence Lessig that discussed the creatively stifling effects of copyright laws. As a business major, many of the projects I have worked on in my business core class have had aspects that run into this issue of copyright or patent infringement. I remember in one particular project, involving Blackberry, my research led me to a very startling statistic (I was unable to locate the source). Every major wireless device manufacturer (Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Blackberry, Nokia, etc) are currently involved in lawsuits with each other. Apple and Samsung spend more money a year on fighting and initiating litigious battles for patent or copyright infringement than they do on research and development. That begs the question, where would we be, technologically speaking, if our market took a more socialistic approach, where sharing knowledge was the norm? The catch 22 in this situation, however, is that if every company shared everything with each other, the motivation of competition would no longer be a driving factor. Would the sharing of knowledge ultimately be counteracted by the lack of competition between companies to build a better product in order to gain a competitive advantage, resulting in more revenue? Where is the happy median?
In my opinion copyright is a big issue in today’s society. People download movies or music hoping that they would not get caught. It is dangerous for them and the companies. It is dangerous for people because they are committing a crime and they do not realize that. It is dangerous for companies because they are losing money and they do not making profit. I think that if companies would reduce their prices people could afford to buy original movies and music and there would not be need for downloading stuff illegally. However, it seems like companies do not want to lower prices and that is where they are making a mistake.
Well if we are in a more socialist state, then the motives for creating better technology would not be for making more profit, but for the betterment of the community as a whole. I don’t think the purpose of the TED talk was to go full blown share everything, I think that the purpose of it was to suggest that adapting an existing thing should not be considered copy right infringement. I think all knowledge should be shared; this I think would help further competition because everyone would be at the same playing field. New adaptions would be that much better.