Sharing is Caring

Photo by: amidanyorai

Lawrence Lessig's TED Talk presentation really caught my attention. His mention of the "criminalization" that standard copyright laws have been creating in the online realm is very troubling.

There are millions of videos on YouTube, and I find it difficult to believe that most of these are breaking the law, as they have been created by "mashing" together previously generated content.

This is exactly what Lessig touches on.

He says that copyright laws are encroaching upon "amateur culture". He also argues that as internet technologies have become more accessible, they have become democratized and available to the masses.

However, copyright laws are making it nearly impossible to recreate, to remix, and to express ourselves using this new medium.

In a time where almost everything in the art world has been done or seen once before, it is imperative that we are given some leeway in terms of what we can reuse. As Lessig says, "remixing is NOT piracy". It is a method that our generation uses to express themselves. Remixing, and borrowing from others work has become an integral part of pop culture.

Therefore, we should stop "criminalizing" our youth by condemning any work that uses something not created entirely from scratch.

If anything, all this talk of copyright breaching and piracy is a way of intimidating the public, and scaring them away from the creative marvels and endless possibilities of the internet. If we want more people to participate, intimidation is not going to make anyone want to come out and play.

The law is bullying artists, denying us our access to culture and our ability to partake in the making of it.

If the internet could adopt a single set of creative sharing principles (such as creative commons) we could encourage an online world of exchange purely based on sharing, minus all the legal work.

After all, aren’t computers simply copying machines?

If we are to make the internet as useful a medium as it could possibly be; what becomes clear to me is that we all have to be willing to share.