Thursday, March 24, 2011

Blog Nine -- Intro to a Remix

First, describe what you see as Lessig's key argument in the Introduction.

After reading Lessig's introduction and a little bit into Chapter 1, I think Lessig's key argument pertains to copyright. Specifically, Stephanie Lenz's story of how the video of her dancing eighteen month year old baby was being scrutinized for copyright infringement because it contained a song by Prince. The fact that Universal Music Group was paying a few lawyers thousands of dollars an hour to force this innocent video off of YouTube. The underlying meaning that Lessig is trying to show us is that if companies hire people to stem the production of pieces like Lenz's, how will our generation's creativity ever evolve? Personally, I think that copyright laws need to be reevaluated, especially with today's technological means of revising and remixing mediums.

Second, describe the difference RW and RO culture and why it matters to Lessig's argument.

The difference between RW and RO is that RW means "Read/Only" while RW stands for "Read/Write". In a Read/Only culture participants are not participating at all, but rather receiving information that is given to them most of the time without question. An example of this could be watching Nickelodeon when you're six years old and simply taking in what the show is presenting to you. As we grow older and the technology advances, the Read/Write culture starts to become more prevalent. In this culture, people listen, watch or read a medium of work but instead of leaving it at that, they add to the culture by creating or recreating new pieces of work. This Read/Write culture is similar to a Participatory Culture. An example of R/W culture is taking a music clip and remixing it to add your own personalized effects.

Third, why does Lessig use Sousa? 

Lessig uses Sousa for a variety of reasons. He uses Sousa for what Sousa believed in and his relativity to the current copyright era. Sousa was very adement that an artist's work was that artist's work and make sure no one else would ruin it. When the voice machines came around, Sousa was understandably worried that they would ruin the current music because they would do the job of the artist, thus taking away any creativity that a person could do. Lessig brings all of this up for us to compare the time when a machine almost ruined the music era, to the present time when machines are infinitely making new remixes and more creative/personalized products. A little compare and contrast.

1 comment:

  1. The first 2 parts are great, the Sousa part starts off a little wrong, but ends on the right foot. Do remember to throw in a few token references to the reading when you summarize. Thanks.

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