“How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law”

Lawrence Lessing is a prominent academic and advocate for the relaxing of legal restrictions on copyrighted and trademarked works. He wrote the article we read entitled “How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law” which discusses the work he advocates for. His main idea is that like anything else in life we have to adapt with the changing times. The concept of dressing “modestly” hasn’t stayed the same in the past 100 years, neither has peoples interpretation of the bible, so why should our laws not change with the times? We are in the midst of a war on our freedom to create according to Lessing. Girl talk for example uses three different songs in the span on thirty seconds remixing it into an entirely new sound. I wonder how far you have to break down a song for it to not to be a song and just notes. Is it wrong to copy two notes? Three notes? If it dosnt sound like the original but has elements of the original to create it is that not its own original piece? Critics of Lessing’s theories disagree. Lessing says “as technology changes the architecture of the proper regulation is going to change”

Lessing also talks about how “all this war is doing is producing a generation of criminals” as a product of the digital age I am completely against how strong these laws are, Lessing is right almost every American kid has broken copyright laws. At the same time I understand the concept that you don’t just legalize something because everyone’s doing it. What they should do is make this media more accessible to people. I don’t know if I can call this a victimless crime because the artists aren’t making the money they expect to be making from their music yet I have a hard time seeing someone already wealthy be called a victim because there not making as much money as they could. Artists these days don’t even make most of their money off of music sales, a majority of their money comes from other places, mostly concerts. SO yes it’s a crime with a victim but who’s it really hurting that badly? I don’t even agree with the argument that smaller artists depend on that money because in all honesty most smaller artists put their music on the internet on purpose to gain exposure. Were all criminals in the eyes of the law when it could very easily be avoided?

What really bothers me about the whole thing is that I wouldn’t mind paying for media if it were more accessible. If it were 10 cents a song on iTunes I would probably be more apt to pay for it than a $1.29. These big companies complain that we break the law downloading so much music and movies when they make it an expensive inaccessible thing to do legally. As music has being such a ubiquitous presence in our lives there are simply people who can’t afford to keep up legally.

This whole war on copyright is also squelching our creativity. I don’t fully understand when losing talks about how copyright in fact encourages creativity. I believe what he’s trying to say is that we have less freedom of speech if they didn’t exist because people are more creative and will put their ideas out there if they know it won’t be copied. I suppose I understand that logic but In more ways I believe our entire remix culture wouldn’t exist if people followed the laws to the letter. Remix culture not just as in music has been essential to the creation of modern art and sharing of ideas. This is an uphill battle for the music and movie industry, I believe in the next few years laws will have to relax to the certain extent. As Lessing said “ I want to think about writing or more boldly creating in a digital age, what should the freedom to write, to quote, the freedom to remix should be?