Remix by Lawrence Lessig

The disjuncture between copyright laws and technology are explored in the book entitled Remix by Lawrence Lessig, and aims to repeal current copyright laws as he claims they are antiquated, or out of date.The major points brought up in this article involve the idea that nothing is new, and remixing old ideas is supposed to create something new, the various democratic differences to types of expression, and accepting the critics.

Lawrence Lessig

I loved Lessig's statement that "any qualified Hollywood lawyer would tell you there's a fundamental difference between quoting Hemingway and quoting Sam Wood's version of Hemingway." I had always wondered about what this fundamental difference was in my ascendence through the world of academia. I never needed to cite well known Shakespearean quotes, but needed to cite The Da Vinci Code.


Indeed, I thought Lessig raised some very concise and logical arguments for why copyright laws are basically in the medieval ages. The stories about Disney complaining about Mickey mouse painted on a wall at a kindergarten where absolutely repellent, and was a great extreme example of how out of touch current laws are.

Evil Mickey

Other arguments were made about the quality of democratized writing, such as blogs having the ability to be more accurate and weighty as The New York Times. Additionally, referring to the internet as an ecosystem was a very interesting way of defining the blogosphere, more in terms of its impact upon the producer of the content than the viewers. I had never put much thought into this idea, but realized that if my diary had the potential to be read and commentated upon by millions of readers, it's contents would change drastically. Lessig's reference to internet trolls was highly amusing, mostly because they reminded me of this video: Internet Bridge Troll


However, I found it admirable that he doesn't filter comments or delete them, all for the sake of growing as a writer and thinker. I think Lessig hit the nail on the head when he said to reward critics. In science, the only way to become right is to try and prove yourself wrong, which can also be called being contrastive. In this respect, if a someone has a thought or theory, and continually tries and proves it wrong and can't, then it can be said that with all the knowledge that they have, they are currently right in their beliefs.

Overall, Lessig gave a compelling argument for why we should include media into the ways in which we remix the rest of the areas of our lives, such as writing, conversations and thoughts. It  should be as he calls it, creativity supported by a new technology.