“Free Culture”
October 16, 2007
Reading through “Free Culture,” by Lawrence Lessig, you’re given an inside view into copyrights and overall insight on piracy, property and so much more. It’s such a vast amount of information, but important to know when dealing with such touchy issues. How free is our culture? It’s a good question to be asking nowadays, and it’s as Lessig says…it’s becoming less free than what it used to be.
To read that Disney once copied material, and the Japanese doujinshi is a copy of an orginal manga, it shows that laws and overall content has become less and less free than before and causing a whole lot of problems. Why is it such a big deal to be using something as inspiration for a piece? If it’s changed to reflect an original idea, but still using what inspired them, why is it considered piracy? Questions like these are always asked by myself when I create something after being inspired by another’s work. Should the idea be guarded so well that no one can use anyone’s original piece? Like Lessig says in “Free Culture,” it would change more than just a persons original work from being taken, it would change the overall learning experience of others. It gives children of this generation less freedom to experience all that our new technology offers. It just doesn’t seem fair in that sense. There shouldn’t be such a strict hold on anything if it’s going to do that. We should be able to test and dabble and learn from our own tinkering to better our own ideas and skills. Living in fear of being sued or fined for doing this is just ridiculous.
When I read the chapter about Jessie, who was a student tinkering with software (for a class assignment) to make it work better, I was outraged at the fact that he was sued and had to admit that he did something wrong. What he was doing was the way the class was set up. He was supposed to be learning from messing with software hands on. No wonder he became an activist in a way. It made me think of a quote that I read not too long ago. “Turn anger into activism…” I’m sure that’s exactly what Jessie did, because it was truly unfair what he had to go through. Something is definitely wrong with the laws that are taking hold.
Early in the reading, Lessig speaks of the Causby’s with their chickens that were being scared to the point of dying, all due to air planes flying too low above their farm. Well like Lessig said, common sense made them think they owned the right to stop the planes from flying too low, the killing of their chickens was a personal issue and hurt them financially so it’s only right to think that you could bring up the issue and make the planes stop what they’re doing. True this was the air they thought they owned, but it was also their land that was being affected by the air that the planes were taking without thinking of what could be affected. It reminded me of a story one of my professors told me. There were a couple of artists (their names escape me) where they put large pieces of art in the natural land around them. They’ve covered entire buildings with fabric and lined islands in the water with fabric that floated creating pink shaped letters seen from a helicopter view. Well, they came to a farmer’s plot of land asking for permission to use his empty space for a piece of art. The farmer wanted to grant him permission, but he came to find that he had no authority over the very land he thought he owned. The government wouldn’t allow the artist to use the farmer’s land and the farmer was both outraged and bewildered that he actually thought he had some say in regards to what would take place on the land he paid for. Of course he thought he had a say, common sense says that if you paid for the land and the fact that you’re living on it, you own it…but it just goes to show that even that isn’t true.
It’s astonishing the changes that are taking place. Thoughts and ideas once free and there for the taking, to make not only wonderful art and movies, but learning experiences…are now being torn away and given restrictions and causing this so called ”free culture,” to fall into barred prisons under lock and key, where only the higherups have access. It really makes you think not only about Piracy issues, especially on the internet, it makes you think of what freedom we have left and how law and government are trying to strip it away from us. It’s something that we definitely have to hang on to, not only for the people now, but for future generations. There should be no law against tinkering and learning in a classroom. It’s absurd that something like that could end up in court where you’re being sued for $15,ooo,ooo!
There are limits of course with copyright and using other peoples work, but we shouldn’t have our hands completely tied behind our backs, living in fear that we could become another Jessie, being sued for something that was designed to teach and allow a student to learn from experience. There are right and wrongs with everything and I feel what’s happening is definitely wrong. And the changes are happening so fast that you can’t even keep up…
A must read for everyone:
