This week’s reading was a nice breath of fresh air in contrast to the philosophy class I thought I accidentally switched into last week.  “Remix” by Lessig explores different cases where copyright laws stunted the opportunity of creativity and one case where copyright laws were respected and still allowed creativity in the music industry to flourish.  Lessig details the amount of work and time it takes for lawyers to protect copyrights and exposes the real price of these processes. One example he uses shows the amount of effort and money that went in to taking down a 30-second or so YouTube video of a 13-month-old dancing to a Prince song. Lessig asks to again reconsider the question, “are the results really worth the price?”

A main viewpoint in Lessig’s piece is John Philip Sousa, who Lessig considers a “copyright extremist” meaning that he believes the laws of copyright should be extended to better protect the “intellectual property” of artists. Sousa is evidently very old-fashioned in his idea of music.  He feels that potential musicians will lose their sense of culture to their music.  He doesn’t seem to have any respect for the new technologies that give the opportunity for anyone to be a musician in the modern sense of the world.  I do understand that these technologies dumb down today’s artists such as Ke$ha and other terrible people, but you can’t ignore new technologies and opportunities in an attempt to stick to old-fashioned ways of production. I think the possibilities should be embraced and explored to their furthest extent to facilitate the growth of art and creativity.