Post #9- Copyright Laws and RW vs. RO cultures

I think one of Lessig's main arguments made through the examples in the introduction is that the idea that "Permission is vital, legally" must be abandoned in order to encourage the creativity of artists. It's like giving a painter a canvas and brushes but no paint. The artists, such as Girl Talk, Candice Breitz, and even the mother with the YouTube video, must be able to freely engage with preexisting materials in order to build upon them and eventually create something entirely different. I like the idea that Breitz believed there were enough pictures and dedications to celebrities so she decided to show the other side, the people who make these icons so important. It's something we don't often consider but, truthfully, without us as consumers and fans of these people, they wouldn't be the celebrities we've come to know and appreciate.

Concepts such as this one are important to explore, especially in such a pop culture driven society, however the copyright laws have made it nearly impossible for artists to convey such bold statements with all the rules regarding usage. Lessig is saying that these laws and the over-protection of famous material is holding the creativity back in our society.

Lessig describes the difference between a Read/Write culture and a Read Only culture when he states that, in an RW culture, "ordinary citizens “read” their culture by listening to it or by reading representations of it" and consequently creating and re-creating from the materials and things they've observed. In contrast, an RO culture is "less practiced in performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable (think: couch) with simple consumption." This is important to Lessig's argument because, since we are believed to be living in an RO culture, there is a fear that ground-breaking ideas such as Breitz's and Girl Talk's will become more and more difficult to create for the artists, since everyone has become content with consuming mass media.

The Sousa example describes how an already famous artist could suffer by the potential for others to re-create and change their works for profit. Truly, it  is a gray area when it comes to the amount of change needed to be done to an original work before it becomes something else. Just in our discussion with Doc Adam, we had trouble discerning between remixes, mash-ups and a completely new song. However, I believe that Lessig's main argument is that the fact that these changes are being made, that people are exploring new ways to look at old things, is a good sign for society and monetary gains shouldn't play a role in limiting the creativity of a culture.