Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2008.
Before I say anything else, I want to mention that I really dig this book. Lessig’s argument is continuous and engaging. The examples come on each page, they are grouped well, and they are both in-depth and effective. The language Lessig uses is direct, his metaphors are compelling, and his sentences come hard and fast.
Lessig does not waste his time correcting or even pointing out the ambiguity and contradictions in his sources. That’s part of his irony.
For example, in his discussion of sharecropping beginning on 243, he paraphrases David Bowie’s legal representation for a remixing context. “The remixer also waived any moral rights he might ‘feel’ he had in the remix. And the remixer granted to Bowie’s label, Sony, ‘worldwide royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive license’ to any content added to the Bowie content to make the remix” (244).
This verbiage is fantastic. It’s exactly the waiving of a feeling of morality. Lessig restrains himself from taking pot-shots at this morass of retro legal language. If I were a musician and were told to sign this document, I would see that I was granting a “non-exclusive” and “royalty-free” license. I would take that to mean that I still had some part in that license, because it is not exclusively granted. I would also assume that Bowie’s franchise could not take royalties on my music.
That is because I am not a lawyer. Professor Lessig is, however, and he claims that Sony (“Bowie”) could then sell my remix, however creative and original my adulteration of his music might be.
I’m concerned the he also doesn’t realize, probably due to the breadth of his project, that several of his analogies, and even his premises, are also contradictory.
In chapter five, “Cultures Compared,” Lessig claims that our country and civilization in general has a long-standing tradition of regulatory humility: the law will control what it can, and beyond that, it will bow out unless personal liberty causes citizens to injure each other. In other words, what the law cannot control, it permits. He argues that by labeling our children pirates, we create a pirate culture. That goes against his premise that if we stop calling a crime a crime, then the next generation will not be criminals. I’d argue that removing the name of a crime doesn’t make it a crime, and calling a person a misfit doesn’t make him eventually become a murderer.
Moreover, isn’t our legal system a little more ethical than this? It’s always worth asking, and sometimes I find our judicial or executive or legislative branches each unethical. Taken as a whole, though, I believe that our system is not “evil,” in terms of the law of Google. If regulatory humility is the motivation or limit on law, then the reason that the law bowed to civil rights activists is that the law couldn’t control it. The power of protest would have angered the government, and the government would have made laws accommodating the upstarts. The awakening of the conscience of a nation would have played no part. Is that what history has reduced us to: Pavlov's dogs, even in ethics?
That’s particularly troubling given Lessig’s later use of Civil Rights activists and the restauranteurs called as federal witnesses. Lessig claims that the business owners wanted the law to support the ethical choice of integration, so that they would not be subject to vandalism and mercenary injustice, as dissenters against that part of a community which wanted to maintain segregation. The law needed to support integration—but wasn’t the owners’ argument rather selfish and faulty? Were they willing to take a stand or not? They were only able to do so if the law would support their choice. I believe they were willing to integrate their businesses regardless.
If the law were based on “regulatory humility” instead of ethical choices, could rights for all American citizens have been fulfilled?
On a lighter note, please consider these comparisons he makes:
I agree that misdemeanor offenses or even federal copyright violations are not as damaging as rape and manslaughter.
But
How much is prostitution really like piracy?
How much is volunteering really like sex?
Bibliography: Techno- & Bio-semiotics.
This complex featured article gives a semiotic take on several digital subjects addressed by Jenkins and Lessig.
Kay O’Halloran (Director), Bradley Smith, Sabine Tan, Alexey Podlasov, Stefano Fasciani and Alvin Chua. “Multimodal Digital Semiotics.”
I also like this piece connecting sign studies from the East to our hemisphere.
Wang, Yongxiang. Chinese Semiotic Studies: a Bridge between Chinese and Western Semiotic Scholars.
Both of these articles may be found in this e-journal, released Sunday.
SemiotiX New Series: A Global Information Bulletin. ISSN: 1916-7296.
http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/
If you want your mind blown, you might check out any article by Estonian bio-semiotician Kaie Kotov, including this one:
Kotov, Kaie. “Do you mind? Does it matter? Semiotics as a science of noosphere.” hortus semioticus 6 (2010). ISSN: 1736-3314. http://www.ut.ee/hortussemioticus/6_2010/kotov.html
Video tutorial:
If you haven’t yet come upon this resource, I must share it. Yale University followed Harvard’s lead and began proving that their professors were as serious about teaching as they are about research.
The first time I was permitted to teach an upper-division course, this came in quite handy.
http://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses
I particularly have used the lectures on literature theory as a benchmark for my own course this semester.
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