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Lawyers and copyright are killing art.
“We, as a society, can’t kill this new form of creativity. We can only criminalise it. We can’t stop our kids from using the technologies we give them to remix the culture around them. We can only drive that remix underground.” – Laurence Lessig.
You’ve got to love Lawrence Lessig. Academic, activist and founding member of Creative Commons, Lessig’s new book – Remix. Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy – speaks about how lawyers and copyright law are killing professional and amateur art. How antiquated legalese that has no appreciation of convergence is threatening to destroy the cultural wave driven by the digital tsunami.
Lessig’s call is for copyright law to be updated, given the birth and rise of the remix culture. The remix sees music, movies, photographs and other art form the spark for creativity, collaboration, integration and sharing. Coined by copyright activists, ‘remix culture’ is the concept used to describe a community that encourages derivative work. According to Lessig, remix drives growth, and his mantra is that the assimilation and transformation of thoughts and ideas drive progress and wealth creation in societies.
To see the proof of this, take a look at China, a working example of a remix culture in action. Unlike Japan, which is staunchly nationalist and insular, the Chinese government has aggressively promoted the ideology of ‘harmony’ in recent years. Leveraging an old Confucius teaching, the value speaks to a respect and acceptance of other people’s differences, and promotes diversity. Professor Sun Shijin from Fudan University Mentality Research Centre explains this notion of ‘harmony’ by saying: “Chinese culture is soft and resilient, we absorb and digest what is good from other countries and yet we synthesise it with Chinese fundamentals….
Harmony is how we enhance ourselves by synthesising one another’s differences.”
Magdalena Wong, CEO of Added Value, China, says the reason why China is more successful than Korea or Japan is because the Chinese are very receptive to the outside world. They feel that many products and services and ideas from the West are better than those found in China. As a nation they try to get what is good from other countries, and better it. Wong says China has a culture of ‘copy and learn’.
“If you are not good at something, you throw it away,” says Wong. “We have a copy mentality. We don’t see taking ideas and bettering them as fake. We just see it as copying and improving. We don’t feel a shame in copying, or feel that we are not creating or innovating.”
China holds many lessons for the West, and a copying or remix culture is just one of them. This as the West declares war on the younger generation because they sample or take, remake and share. Western capitalism has created a ‘read-only’ culture where media monoliths sell in a one-way stream to an audience they think are passive consumers. The digital revolution has turned this on its head and spawned a new breed of creative consumer activists that download and manipulate, giving birth to viral sensations.
Lessig contends that the lawyers and the artists can make peace in a hybrid economy, the likes of which is being pioneered by YouTube.
However, this means that lawyers may make less money from huge corporations that threaten teenagers who mash up the latest manga sensation or post a picture of Harry Potter on their website. I’m sure that’s something we’ll learn to live with.
Mandy de Waal is a writer, columnist and former capitalist. She still helps to turn the cogs of commerce, but is a little like an ex-smoker – highly critical of those serving the greed machine. If you’ve got a story on corrupt capitalism, mail her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
