Blog 12: Movie & Lessig

    In the movie we watched in class it had a lot connections with our reading of Remix by Lawrence Lessig. To start off, in the book Lessig stated “sharing economies build value” (pg 177). With sharing it allows for much more creativity, the spread of the the creative work, and much more enjoyment for the public. In the video, it focused on people miss using copyrighted material, specifically Girl Talk. With his remixing of various copyrighted music, he then takes his newly created pieces and plays them in clubs and various venues. He is very well known throughout the US, and with his music he has added value to his creative work, music, and to the US culture
    In the book Lessig talks about a tag in Flickr that users may add that states “you are free to share this work” (pg 192). Sharing can mean a lot of things. On Facebook my friend posted a link from YouTube of Bruno Mars’s new music video to “Lazy Song” which I would have never seen otherwise. Was she breaking the law by sharing that? Was the person who posted it on YouTube breaking the law? This ultimately spread like wild fire through all my friends in thinking it was one of the best music videos, thus getting the work out about Bruno Mars, which leads to his popularity even more. This is exactly what Girl Talk (in a sense) is doing. He is using well know, forgotten, and new songs and promoting them further with his creative style and popularity.
    Lessig states “the fans were where the money was” (pg 210). This is completely true in that the fans are the ones who give all the money to the music industry. However, how do the fans given money to the music industry for their music if they don’t hear about it from their friends, online, or from their favorite DJ. Although copyrighting music does lead to money landing in the wrong pockets, or no money at all, there should be a limit on how far copyrighting can go. In the movie they mentioned that patenting laws have gone so far as to patent live organisms. There needs to be a limit on copyrighting and patenting, before it gets out of control.

Blog 11: Commercial and Sharing

In chapter 7 Lessig stated that a “commercial economies build value with money at their core” and that “sharing economies build value, ignoring money” (page 179). These two economies, although different in their values both benefit us. But what if there was a combination of the two. 
What Lessig argues is that with a mixture of the two economies a hybrid economy could be created and be even more beneficial to us and allow us to grow and change. “The hybrid economy is either a commercial entity that aims to leverage value from a sharing economy, or it is a sharing economy that builds a commercial entity to better support its sharing aims”.