RW Culture Video

Lawrence Lessig, who is a Stanford Law professor, takes a strong view on the topic of free culture/copyright, saying that it has always been a "vibrant part of our intellectual history". Copyright, which was originally created as a regulator, is now the most important thing to consider when creating a work. Many people, especially Lessig, say that because of all of the information that is available, but is copyrighted, the media who is exposed to has been impeded. I completely agree with Lessig in his ideas about how, because of the rules of copyright of "big cultural monopolists", the creativity of the public is being hindered.
Because of all of the new technology, especially the internet, people are less likely to have their own views. When people watch television shows, or read/watch things on the internet they are more likely to have this effect their thinking. The different forms of media, such as blogs, television shows, and web videos are good for showing opinions, however people may focus too much on this and not take a better interest into what their own personal views on things are.
Lawrence Lessig's video on free culture gave several examples of things that are spoofs off something else, or works that are based off of someone else's prior works. For example, Weird Al yankovic, who is known for doing his spoofs off of other artist's songs, almost got in trouble for doing a spoof off the song beautiful by James Blunt. Another way of looking at this is that the new ideas of today are harder to express because of the copyright laws. An important view of Lessig however is that "theres not a musical phrase, a scene from a movie, or an essay on a blog that does not borrow something from earlier work."
Almost all creative works have been built on past works, and everything now is inhibited because of the rules that they cant base their new ideas on past ones. Lessig also gives the example of how Steamboat Willie, by Disney was even based upon a previous work. This just goes to show that now it is so hard to fully express yourself because of all of the restrictions there are. Lessig perfectly sums it up by saying "this "massive expansion" in copyright's scope needs to be corrected, and corrected soon; copyright needs to recalibrated, rebalanced, reined in."