Copyright has already been an familiar topic in our daily lives which some people even take it for granted, but in copyright, there are actually some issues worthy of considerations.
In the reading material, the argument about copyright is mainly extended between the difference of RO and RW culture. The former one focuses on the legitimacy of copyright while the latter one concentrates on the limitation of copy right. For Lessig, he is a supporter of the RW culture and at the same time, he does not deny the application of copyright. While as far as I am concerned, I hold the same point with him.
First and foremost, “The ability to channel the commercial return from music or film has allowed many people to create who otherwise could not. This is the proper function of copyright law.”(Lessig.85) Innovation and creativity can be regarded as two most important elements in modern society for the improvement of the community. Therefore, the capacity to regulate the spreading of innovative ideas can guarantee the owners the right to benefit themselves to a certain extent. And this kind of regulation is also necessary for the order of academic and social world, or the innovation will be misconducted. Thus, a reasonable control over creation is for the good development of art and social life in the long term. “Copyright law, after all, is a regulation of speech, and justified if it produces incentives to created speech that otherwise would not be created.”(Lessig. 96) To a certain extent, this can be regarded as the role and function of copyright which serves as a kind of security for the renewable creation of innovative speech and artworks and many other things.
However, on the other hand, the limitations of copyright also exert certain influence on the production of creativity. Take remix of Jazz as laptop music as an example, “A modern equivalent to Jazz is called by some laptop music, by others simply sampling. Musicians create this music simply by taking the sound of recordings of other musicians and remix them.”(Lessig. 104) This kind of recording of remix is later thought of as a trigger to copyright law. Some people appeal to the original creativity and think that the recreation based on the previous works should be limited. “But anyone who thinks remixes or mashups are neither original nor creative has very little idea about how they are made or what makes them great. It takes extraordinary knowledge about a culture to remix it well.”(Lessig. 93) From this, actually remix is something also inspirational as other cultures instead of some kind of copy. So in reality, I think the regulation of copyright should be somehow limited to some extent both to serve the function of both protection and eliciting creativity.
Work cited
Lessig, L. (2008). Comparing Cultures. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (pp. 84-116). New York: Penguin Press HC, The.
I agree with your argument about how copyright laws are intended to protect the creator. I do think that this is an important thing to consider when looking at the examples that you gave. Taking the recreation of music using sections of jazz, here I wonder at what point would you consider those original pieces to have been taken without the artists protection? Would it be a certain level of use, say the remix only put an extra sound in the beginning but used all of the rest of the song, or could it be time after the artist created it? I think that this is the center of the copyright debate, and that is at what point does the artist have control, and what point do they lose it? Great work in this post.