Word: lessig
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...historical basis for creating a Read/Write culture: Lessig resurrects the testimony of American composer John Phillip Sousa, who went before Congress in 1906 to discuss copyright reform: "When I was a boy ... in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left.'" As Lessig explains, "Sousa was not offering a prediction about the evolution of the human voice box. He was describing how a technology ... would change...
...current copyright law: As Lessig explains, today's copyright laws regulate reproductions or "copies." But in a digital context, every time you listen to a song or play a video, that content is "copied" from a server somewhere to the hard drive in your computer. The same is not true when you crack open a book: "For most of American history it was extraordinarily rare for ordinary citizens to trigger copyright law ... RO culture in the digital age is thus open to control in a way that was never possible in the analog age ... For the first time, [copyright...
...birth of the "Copyright Wars": According to Lessig, the war began during the fall of 1995, when members of the "content industry" (read: media giants) began to grasp the implications of digital technology on copyright enforcement. (An analog tape was difficult to copy and disseminate. An MP3 file, on the other hand, just required the click of a mouse). "What before was both impossible and illegal is now just illegal," Lessig explains. In September of that year, movie studios and record labels met with the Commerce Department to map out a new legal strategy. The wildly popular and ill-fated...
...technology as the solution, not the problem: Though media companies and the government have relied on lawyers to fight digital piracy, Lessig highlights the much more logical approach of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who chose to forgo such legal weapons in favor of a "fight-fire-with-fire" approach - Digital Rights Management, or DRM. This code limited the redistribution of iTunes songs, thus reassuring record companies that the online music store wouldn't be a total rip-off. "DRM was thus a speed bump: it slowed illegal use just enough to get the labels to buy in." But Lessig also...
...remix as an art form: Likening this new form of digital creativity to a chef using store-bought ingredients, Lessige writes, "the remix artist does the same thing with bits of culture found in his digital cupboard." To him, such artistic expression represents an entirely new way to process and absorb information. Recalling storytime with his oldest son, Lessig writes, "The moment he first objected to a particular shift in the plot, and offered his own, was one of the coolest moments of my life. ... I want to see this expressed in every form of cultural meaning ... I want...