Sunday, April 24, 2011

Blog #12

RIP and Lessig have many things in common. Intellectual property is an important concept that is going to be at the forefront of copyright music. People are going to be restricted from free creative form as big music corporation restrict the use of their music on an unfairly individual basis.
Those who participate in a sharing economy do so with the obvious intention of creating something new with something already created. As long as they buy the CD, such as someone buying a book, I think creative control is good for the artists. Radiohead did a good job by prompting people to pay whatever they felt appropriate for the album and by doing this their music was mixed and spread around the internet for more people to become exposed to. Lonely Island, as described by Lessig, allowed people to take their music and mix it, and this allowed them to break into the market. Ownership of music only goes as far as it can be enforced. People are going to sing Happy Birthday and many will not get in trouble for it, but still knowing how far reaching these copyright laws go is frightening. To own story culture, like Disney began with its Fairy Tale Princess franchise, should not be allowed.(RIP)
“take and share my work freely. Let it become part of the sharing economy. But if you want to carry this work over to the commercial economy, you must ask me first. Depending upon the offer, I may or may not say yes.”(Lessig)

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Blog #11

Describe the difference between a sharing and a commercial economy. Why does this distinction matter to Lessig's main argument?

A commercial economy is defined as “…an economy in which money or “price” is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange.” (118) For example, going to the store to buy a CD, clothes, food etc.

A sharing economy is defined as “…as an economy, where access to culture is regulated not by price, but by a complex set of social relations.” (145) the concept here is that as part of a community there are social norms set toward giving and we are obligated to perform them for our community members. However, in a sharing economy, there is no monetary value set.

These two concepts are important to Lessigs argument because he claims that society could not function without one or the other. We need both the tangible exchange of money vs this volunteerism idea to function. This in part has been represented by the internet and sites that we purchase from like Nordstrom, lets say, and sites we don't pay for like Wikipedia.