Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Picking fights with the wrong people

Kutiman's mashup that I posted about here earlier this year as a neat musical phenomenon, is also a hot IP issue; TechDirt reports that Warner Music has ordered Lessig to take down one of his own presentations (below, app. 30 minutes) from the internet because it displays the mashup. Lessig makes distinctions between ReadOnly and ReadWrite cultures, quoting Huxley - and before him Sousa - on the lamentable transition of "culture" from an act of creation to an act of passive consumption, wrought by the advent of technologies such as the record player and radio. He argues that the proliferation today of mashups - a hybrid of commercial and sharing economies - represents a a positive new development, and a revival of ReadWrite type creativity, and that the concept of copyright must be updated and adjusted to accommodate it.

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