Larry Lessig And His Thoughts On Copyrights And Creativity

Beasley_Larry_BSB_Blog_2

While perusing the TED website’s entertainment section, I happened upon a speech by Mr. Larry Lessig entitled “Laws That Choke Creativity”. Upon further investigation I learned that Mr. Lessig is one of the leading voices on copyright law, and how it affects society. This speech intrigued me simply because the topic of copyright law is so relevant within my particular field of expertise; in fact, without copyrights many aspects of the entertainment industry would lose their viability.

I found Mr. Lessig’s ideas and opinions on copyright law to be refreshing and revolutionary. Many times I have been confronted with the question of why copyright laws are so problematic and if the problems can even be solved. I was impressed to hear Mr. Lessig’s ideas, which not only indicated that he had a firm mental grasp on the state of things but that he had some real and well thought out solutions.

In Mr. Lessig’s speech, he made a parallel between our current issues of copyrights versus amateur content creators, and ASCAP’s early 20^th century monopoly on much of the licensed popular music of the time. This parallel showed that as long as large entities are allowed to maintain a monopoly over creative content, our society’s creative element would continue to be stifled. In addition, Mr. Lessig spoke on how the criminalization of modern forms of free expression caused many common people to consistently live against the law.

What I found most interesting about Mr. Lessig’s speech was the fact that is was impeccably balanced. Many supporters of the rights of content creators generally are extremely anti-establishment, anti-artists’ rights, or even anti-creativity but Mr. Lessig acknowledges the right of artists to draw income from their content. He even stated that artists’ content should not be duplicated without artists’ permission. However, he also stated that content creators should also have a right to re-mix and create entirely new content from previously existing content.

The last thing I thought was worth addressing from Mr. Lessig’s TED speech, was the manner in which original content created from previous content was regarded. Mr. Lessig seems to understand that in a generation permeated by technology, much of the original content derived from previous content is in many ways a form of communication. The upcoming generation of tech-savvy youth utilize different forms of media to convey many of the same ideas and feelings felt universally by all of us, and they should not be punished for that.