Sunday, May 1, 2011

Blog 12. auf wiedersehen lessig

First off the messages of both the book and RIP, the documentary, are similar. They focus on how restrictive regulation is on creative works. Both mention Girl Talk (RIP especially... man there was a lot of Girl Talk in that movie...), yet a real difference is the focus between both mediums. Lessig tended to romanticize the amateur more than RIP did.

Both the movie and Lessig also stress the fact that culture builds on culture, and that originality is not as common as we might believe. Remixing and sampling are long, time-honored traditions in all forms of creative creation as both these products point out.

A final concept that both the documentary RIP and Lessig's Remix share is their view of why copy right law seems so ineffective today. It is because these laws are terribly out of date when compared with the technology that creative industries use today. Copyright law reflects a knowledge of more analog technologies, yet poorly handles the distribution and creation of digital works.