In remix Lawrence Lessig, a political activist and Harvard professor talks about American copyright laws.

Lawrence believes that there is an obvious conflict between congress, the entertainment industry and users. Lessigs argument is that copyright laws that are in place were not written to take into account the digital technologies of today, because when you buy a song digitally you are merely getting a copy of a copy stored on your hard drive. Copyright laws are against the illegal reproduction of physical copies. Lessigs uses for instance the example of one reading an electronic copy of a book; the machine is simply copying the text from your hard drive or from a network to the memory of your computer. Lessig states that that copy triggers ours copyright laws. Even the music you hear from the cd you bought you are hearing a copy of the recording traveling through the headphones or speakers. He says that no matter what we do, we are always triggering the laws of copyrights. Every form of listening must then be justified as licensed or fair use. Lessig argues that our current copyright laws are going to breed a culture called read only culture. This is a culture in which we only consume information from professional sources that have control over what is being disseminated limiting us to only consume information as were being fed. This read only culture is lost on our children Lessig says, he believes it will not work because our children now are more technologically advanced than ever. Children are exposed to and are using technology a lot earlier than ever-in history. Lessig believes that this new generation is not going to be held back by copyright or never remix anything. The average teenager spends one hour behind a computer and seven minutes reading a book, which isnt even really reading. To stop this read it world Lessig things were headed to, he has created the Read/Write culture. Unlike the Read only culture Read and Write culture will encourage the consumer and the producer to interact. Lessig uses blogs to explain the three layers of democratization. The

first layer is content; the author writes and makes a comment box available to the guest to share their opinion. The second layer is indices, where programs keep track of how many times a website is visited. The third layer is a ranking system, things like likes on Facebook, tagging, and follows if you are on twitter. Lessig also speaks about his two economies. The commercial economy and the sharing economy. He describes the commercial economy as a market where good and products are sold for a certain amount of money or for a certain kind of labor. Examples are websites such as Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes. Stores that sell products stored in warehouses all over. The shared economy is a marketplace where information is used as currency instead of selling products for money or labor information is almost traded. Lessigs also talks about his three different hybrid economies that are similar to commercial economy as well as sharing economy. Community spaces are where people share information and look create places for people with similar interests, so you get sites such as Dogster, Craigslist and YouTube. The sites are free to enter and make money on people buying advertising space. The other hybrid is collaborative spaces where people come together to work on one common task; the tasks are the only focuses. Sites like Wiki answers, yahoo answers, and ask.com are good examples because users do not receive any money for their contributions. Community hybrid is the last hybrid Lessig speaks of; the community Hybrids are virtual environments where people live separate digital lives. People trade virtual goods for real money like the Sims and second life. People write code to create things in the game and sell it to other players for money. Lessig ends his book with five steps to copyright reform. The first step is to deregulate amateur activity, meaning allowing noncommercial contributors the right to use copyright for amateur works. Lessigs believes that companies will benefit because they will have less content

to monitor online freeing up time and resources. Second step decriminalizing file sharing, the thought is that by authorizing noncommercial file sharing with a blanket tax for the payment of royalties to artists who worked is shared by authorizing their work to be licensed. This is a low cost offer to gain access to free legal file sharing. The third is to decriminalize the copy. Lessig believes that we cannot continue to criminalize the copy of downloaded works because the copies will always be triggering copyright laws. The fourth step would be to simplify the copyright infringement laws so that if the government is going to charge children six figure lawsuits the laws should be simple enough for all to understand so that they may not get into trouble in the first place. The fifth step would be to create a clear title. With this a list would names the owners and authors of all works. On January 8th 2012 Lessig took part in the SOPA strike that was the largest online protest in the history of society to stop an Internet censorship bill. Representative Lamar S. Smith introduced the SOPA bill to the House of Representatives. The purpose of the bill was to go after counterfeit products entering the country at an alarming rate as well as copyright infringement. Patrick Leahy then introduced the PIPA act, the purpose of the bill was to enforce a law that made it possible for the US government as well as the owners of copyrights to shut down websites who sell counterfeit goods or goods created from infringements on peoples copyrights. The bill would have cost forty seven million dollars for congress to fund. Fight for the Future the non-profit organization rallied support to back their argument that SOPA was the governments attempt to give control to the entertainment industry although they were going after websites who participated in illegal file sharing. Most of the infringing websites were outside of Americas jurisdiction; this made Fight for the Future uncomfortable they thought that there were alternative motives. Internet providers have the ability to block access to sites that

were accused of illegal file sharing and had the ability to sue the United States directories and forums that have links to the sites. The second power gives corporations and governments the ability to seize the funds of websites accused of infringing. Another argument against PIPA was that it would not put an end to the downloading

Biz Markie, a rapper that was signed to Warner Bros. Records, had sampled a piece of the song Alone Again by singer songwriter Gilbert OSullivan. Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy granted an injunction against Warner Bros. although warner claimed that Grand Upright did not own a valid copyright on the song despite documentation stating that OSullivan had indeed transferred title to them. Warner wanted to prove to the court that sampling was a huge part of the music industry and for that reason there was no foul play. One of the most persuasive pieces of evidence that played to the defenses case was the fact that Warner had attempted to obtain a license to clear the sample. Although it does not establish that Grand Upright were the legit owners, it does inform that court of Warner Bros. knowledge of the song being copyrighted, which means that their infringement was knowing and willingly. The court felt as though the defendants knew they were violating the plaintiffs, and were only trying to sell thousands of records. The courts aimed to make an example of those who would so openly infringe on peoples copyright for profit. The results of the case affected the sound of Hip Hop extraordinarily. Hip Hop music was based solely on samples now had to change. Producers often-used dozens of samples in records now could no longer could do so. Now each and every sample had to clear, the cost of these songs made it almost impossible for more than one record to be sampled in newer works. Some records required one hundred percent of the royalties

generated. Because of this now producers simply replayed the sample on new instruments or got newer recreated works and simply played the songwriters not the artists or the record labels, that is now how samples are cleared or gotten around now and the system our copyright systems adheres too. I believe that freedom of speech and the ability to recreate works to express ones own opinion and realities through creative endeavors is a vital part of any society. Expression has helped develop nations throughout the history of time and many creators whether artists, musicians, writers, scientists, have contributed in so many ways, been recognized and benefited financially as well because of copyright protection on their works. In a digital age in which businesses such as mega upload, are the equivalents to a counterfeiter on the streets of New York. Vast million dollar businesses are trading copywriting content without any compensation to the artists, while encouraging and even rewarding users who are uploading the content. Unfortunately there are many legal businesses that compensate artists, but may not be able to survive and be competitive with businesses that upload illegally. Although record labels mean well, they often times take drastic and unnecessarily tough actions, often times against the wrong people, the consumers of their music catalog. These attacks have been the driving force for consumers no longer buying records but opting to download instead. This has forced labels as well as artists to look for other sources of revenue streams. Future consumers will want temporary access to works instead of outright ownerships, streaming services and actual streams of content has increased all across the board from movies to television and of course including music. Streaming services, as well as digital downloads in 2012 increased by nine therefore accounting for $5.6 billion dollars in revenue. Although the topic of payouts to the artists is still an issue, the music industry is really relying on streaming and digital download services for

support. There has been a 26% decline in illegally downloaded music, subscription services like Spotify and Rdio have seen a 44% increase in subscriptions, totaling 25 million active users, out of which 6 million users are paying subscribers. Americas copyright laws, which have been in place since 1909 need to be updated to deal with the realities of this century, hopefully they will revise with economic impact in mind.

Works Cited
McGovern, K. (2013, Febuary 27). Retrieved from Spin.com: http://www.spin.com/articles/music- industry-saved-by-streaming-music-service Works Cited Crain, Caleb. "Fair and Balanced: On Copyright and Fair Use | The Nation." Fair and Balanced: On Copyright and Fair Use | The Nation. The Nation, 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. Ehrlich, Brenna. "Hypebot." 'Hypebot TypePad, 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. Fight for the Future, and Center for Rights. "PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks the Internet." PROTECT IP Act Breaks the Internet. Fight for the Future 2011, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. H.R. H.R.3261.IH (2011) (enacted). Print. Lessig, Lawrence. "Larry Lessig: Laws That Choke Creativity." Mar. 2007. Lecture. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print. McGovern, Kyle. "INTERVIEWSStreaming Services Really Are Saving the Music Industry, Global Sales Prove." SPIN. SPIN Music Group, 27 Feb. 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. Moser, David J. Moser on Music Copyright. Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology, 2006. Print. S. 968 (2011) (enacted). Print. Shirky, Clay. "Clay Shirky: Why SOPA Is a Bad Idea." TALKS. New York, New York City. Jan. 2012. Lecture