Blog #12

Hello my friends! This is my last blog for class =D

Lessig and Rip! have several connections. First, we have the ideas of commercial and non commercial licenses. Lessig talks on how most artist produce their work under "all rights reserved" were no one is allowed to share, reproduce or sample the work. But also there are artist that give a "non commercial license" were the author of an art piece allows other people to take its work, but once it goes into a commercial economy then the author needs to authorize the use. in Rip!, Girl Talk stated how commercial economies in music slow down the production of culture. Moreover, some laws were changed in order to make it even harder for works to get into the public domain. Disney was the main posher to move from 14 to 90 years for works to get in the public domain.

Both Girl Talk and Lessing talk about the definition of "appropiately", the appropiate use of something. Girl Talk said that most of the time, no one is able to take a piece of music and sample it. It would take thousands of dollars in order to "appropiately" use the work and release a cd. When he created a piece of music in front of the lady in charge of copyright laws in the US (cant remember her title, sorry) and she said that she can see a problem with the remix because nothing was beign used appropiately. Lessig says many sharing economies take place and we all participate in them without knowing. He uses the example of Google, were we use google as a search engine and get information from them and google uses our "click" to collect pieces of information they can later use. he then raises the question - Is that appropiate use of our clicks? is google riding on your work for free? (lessig 234)

Lessig suggest that a hybrid can help decriminalize youth's creativity. But he state also that it would take change in the law in order to have more healthy and succesful business (lessig 248). Girl Talk suggest that by ackoliging someone that you took its work, kinda like when you cite a paper, should be good enough. This is because you are not stealing from anyone you are creating an original piece of art with the inspiration of others, just like disney did...

Blog #11

Lessig describes how there are 3 different kinds of economies: commercial economy, sharing economy and a mixed of both. He states that a commercial economy is an economy in which money or “price” is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange (18). In short, this means that someone pays for a service or a product with money. It’s just like our everyday transactions when we buy food, pump gas, etc. Now, a sharing economy is one where money is NOT used as means of exchange. For example, you can spend time with a friend and that time together is part of the friendship relationship you both have. Once money is involved for the time you both spend together, the relationship is no longer a friendship (18).

Lessig explains that for the most part, the internet is a commercial economy (121), where users buy services on the internet; wetter is a book on Amazon, rent movies through Netflix, or bid for items on EBay. But there are also instances where sites like Wikipedia, which is more like a sharing economy because people volunteer to write articles that stay there on the site for free for anyone to copy and use. He called this “copyleft license” (157).

This concepts are important to understand because the internet it’s exactly that, a remix of both economies. The users of the web often do not realized how we are part of both of these economies. Also, Lessig’s argues that there should be more of a mid are of compromise when it comes to cultural creations (web, music, etc.)