1. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy
Lawrence Lessig
Part 1: Cultures

2. Preface
• Copyright is critically • Copyright laws
important to a healthy create the incentives
culture. to produce great new
works that otherwise
• Properly balanced, it is would not be
produced
essential to inspiring
certain forms of
creativity.
• “The inspiration for this book is the copyright wars, by which right -
thinking sorts mean not the “war” on copyright “waged” by “pirates”
but the “war” on “piracy,” which “threatens” the “survival” of certain
important American industries. (xv)”

3. Copyright Wars
• Not actual conflicts of survival
• Wars of survival for certain businesses and business models
• Other values are affected by this war
• “We must make sure this war doesn’t cost more than it is worth. We must
be sure it is winnable, or winnable at a price we’re willing to pay. (xvi)”
• Technology enables us to create and spread creative work differently
from how it was created and spread before
• “What kind of moral platform will sustain our kids, when their
ordinary behaviour is deemed criminal? Who will they
become? (xvii)”

4. John Philip Sousa
• Famous American
• He was not entitled to
composer
any royalties from his
recordings
• Known for his marches;
Washington Post and
Stars and Stripes • Companies that sold
Forever recorded versions of songs
were not required to
pay the songwriters
• 1906 testified before
Congress to complain
about the existing • Sousa considered this a
form of piracy
copyright laws

5. Shifting Cultures
• A move from local
• Sousa did not like amateur sub-
cultures to a centralized
concept of
highly produced
recorded music
authoritative culture
• He feared a
• the distinction between
centralized the culture that Sousa
commercially produced feared and the one that he
and controlled music embraced as;
culture Read Only culture and
Read Write culture

6. Read/Only Culture
• When a society is “less
practiced in
performance, or amateur
creativity, and more
• RCA corporation -Viacom
comfortable with simple
consumption. (28)”
• Control
• Production
• Distribution
• Platform

7. Read/Write Culture
• When “ordinary citizens
“read” their culture by
listening to it or by • Linux - Wikipedia
reading representations
of it. They add to the • “The code that built the
culture they read by Net came from a sharing
creating and re-creating economy. (163)”
the culture around them.
(28)” • Collaboration
• Remix Culture

8. Cultures Compared
• Amateur vs. Professional • The balance that existed
between Read Only and
Read Write culture, has
• Values
been altered
• Education
• The internet has created a
a cultural shift towards
• Money
a Read Write society
• The Purpose of Law
• Further implications

9. Context
• Fundamental Concepts of the Digital Age - Legal and Cultural
• The Language of New Media - Lev Manovich
• Hybrid creativity - Hybrid economies
• Building on History and Theory - Computing and Networking
- Creativity and Commerce
• Recent legislation is an attempt to reconcile differences
between the Read Write Culture and the earlier Read Only
culture

10. Questions
• Can you think of examples of some read/write or read
only cultures? Can you think of any instances of a clash of
these two cultural interests?
• Is there an inherent conflict between read/only and read/
write cultures?
• What should law makers do? What kinds of laws could be
written in an attempt to create a balanced and fair
intellectual property system for the digital age?