Lessig’s Remixed Argument
If you didn’t notice it reading “Remix”, the whole entire book is about the freedom of creative expression and which rights to do so. The remix culture is all about taking what is known and written for the public and using that information to dispell your own version of that information to the public domain. Sometimes it’s used commercially, other times is used personally and academically.
The framework of “Remix” by Lawrence Lessig is no exception. For 294 pages we are reading and consuming remixed thought. The way that he frames his arguments, he rephrases quotes that are relative to his topic to support his thesis or basis of it. Which in his case, is a remix.
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‘For as well as complaining about the “piracy” of mechanical music, Sousa also complained about the cultural emptiness that mechanical music would create. As he testified:…Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution’ …
“We will not have a vocal cord left.” John Philip Sousa was obviously not offering a prediction about the evolution of the human voice box. He was describing how a technology — “these infernal machines” — would change our relationship to culture.
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Lessig, in many other pages like this one, will begin an argument from a quote and will repeat, and manipulate it into his own works. When we think about copyright and the laws around it, he definitely practices what he preaches. He uses what he believes as the foundation to remix and reuse the words of other people’s strongly founded ideas.
I think that was my favorite part about reading the book. It felt very intentional that he used that skill of remixing words to his convenience to talk about Read/Write culture in an interesting way.
I can relate to this topic of remix because of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is a form of taking the original content and use it for their own merit. Such as the box braid or cornrow heavily worn as a protective style in the black community being illegal or “out of uniform” in work places or school for people of color, but Kim Kardashian being praised and highlighted in magazines for loosely wearing the same hairstyles for leisure.
But all remix is not bad, some are just not used to the proper accreditation or context. Making the hair style non discriminatory would solve all of that dissonance. Same thing with copyright laws. Like Lessig mentioned, if it became common law and knowledge that copyright is non-discriminatory, and everyone could use it, it would be ambiguous and easier on everyone.
Thats how remix culture can thrive and grow for future generations.
