Reexamining the remix Lawrence Lessig

I want to talk about what we learn from

conservatives and I’m at a stage in life

where I’m yearning for my old days so I

want to confess to you that when I was a

kid

indeed I was conservative I was a young

Republican a teenage Republic and a

leader in the teenage Republicans indeed

I was the youngest member of any

delegation in the 1980 convention that

elected Ronald Reagan to be the

Republican nominee for president now I

know what you’re thinking you’re

thinking that’s not what the Internet’s

say you’re thinking Wikipedia doesn’t

say this fact and indeed this is just

one of the examples of the junk that

flows across the tubes in these

Internet’s here

Wikipedia reports that this guy this

former congressman from Erie

Pennsylvania was at the age of twenty

one of the youngest people at the

Republican National Convention but it’s

just not true

indeed it drives me so nuts let me just

change this

all right okay speaker lawrence lessig

right okay finally truth will be brought

here okay see right it’s done it’s

almost done okay we’re finished that’s

it please save this great and Wikipedia

is fixed finally okay but no this is

really it besides the point but the

thing I want you to think about when we

think about conservatives not so much

this issue of the 1980 convention the

thing to think about is this they go to

church oh you know I mean a lot of

people go to church I’m not talking

about that only conservatives go to

church and I’m not talking about the god

thing I don’t want to get into that you

know that’s not my point they go to

church by which I mean they do lots of

things for free for each other they hold

potluck dinners indeed they sell books

about potluck dinners they serve food to

poor people they share they give they

give away for free and it’s the very

same people leading Wall Street firms

who on Sunday show up and share and not

only food right these very same people

are strong believers in lots of context

in the limits on the markets they are in

many important places against markets

indeed they like all of us celebrate

this kind of relationship and they’re

very keen that we don’t let money drop

into that relationship else it turns

into something like this they want to

regulate us those conservatives to stop

us from allowing the market to spread in

those places because they understand

there are places for the market and

places where the market should not exist

where we should be free to enjoy the

fellowship

of others they recognize both of these

things have to live together and second

great thing about conservatives they get

a ecology right it was the first great

Republican president of the 20th century

who taught us about environmental

thinking Teddy Roosevelt they first

taught us about ecologies in the context

of natural resources and then they began

to teach us in the context of innovation

economics they understand in that

context free they understand free is an

important essential part of the cultural

ecology as well that’s the thing I want

you to think about that now I know you

don’t believe me really here so here’s

exhibit number one I want to share with

you my latest hero Julian Sanchez a

libertarian who works at the for many

people evil Cato Institute okay so

Julian made this video he’s a terrible

producer of videos but it’s great

content I’m gonna give you a little bit

of it so here he is beginning the way

remix culture seems to be evolving so

what he does is he begins to tell us

about these three

this is fantastic Brad pack remix said

to this which of course spread virally

hugely successful and then two people

from Brooklyn saw it they decided they

wanted to do the same

and then of course people from San

Francisco saw it in San Francisco’s

thought they had to be the same as well

so they’re beautiful but this

libertarian has some important lessons

he wants us to learn from this here’s

lesson number one there’s obviously also

something really deeply great about this

they’re acting in the sense that they’re

emulating the original mash up as a dime

you shot it obviously has a strong eye

and some experience with video editing

but this is also basically just a group

of friends having an authentic social

moment and screwing around together

it should feel familiar and kind of

resonating for anyone who’s had a

sing-along or dance party with a group

of good friends or so that’s importantly

different from the earlier videos we

looked at because here remix isn’t just

about an individual doing something

alone in this basement

it becomes an act of social creativity

and it’s not just that it yields a

different kind of product at the end is

that potentially it changes the way we

relate to each other all of our normal

social interactions become a kind of

invitation to this sort of collective

expression it’s our real social lives

themselves that are transmuted into art

and so that misty criterion draws from

these two points one remix is about

individuals using our shared culture as

a kind of language to communicate

something to an audience stage two

social remix is really about using it to

mediate people’s relationships with each

other

first within each video the brat pack

characters are used as a kind of

template for performing the social

reality of each group but there’s also a

dialogue between the videos where once

the basic structure is established it

becomes a kind of platform for

articulating the similarities and

differences between the groups social

and physical worlds and then it is for

me the critical key to what Julien has

to say copyright policy isn’t just about

how to incentivize the production of a

certain kind of artistic commodity it’s

about what level of control we’re gonna

permit

the exercise over our social realities

social realities that are now inevitably

permeated by pop culture I think it’s

important that we keep these two

different kinds of public goods in mind

if we’re only focused on how to maximize

the supply of one I think we risk

suppressing this different and richer

and in some ways maybe even more

importantly right sphingo point freedom

needs this opportunity to both have the

commercial success of the great

commercial works and the opportunity to

build this different kind of culture and

for that to happen you need ideas like

fair use to be central and protected to

enable this kind of innovation as this

libertarian tells us between these two

creative cultures a commercial and a

sharing culture the point is they he

here gets that culture now my concern is

we Dems too often not so much right

think for example about this great

company in the good old days when this

Republican ran that company their

greatest work was work that built on the

past right all of the great Disney works

were works that took works that were in

the public domain and remixed them or

waited till they entered to the public

domain to remix them to celebrate this

add-on remix creativity indeed Mickey

Mouse himself of course as Steamboat

Willie is a remix of the then very

dominant very popular steamboat bill by

Buster Keaton this man was a remixer

extraordinary he is the celebration and

ideal of exactly this kind of creativity

but then the company passes in through

this dark stage to this Democrat wildly

different this is the mastermind behind

the eventual passage of what we call the

Sonny Bono copyright term extension Act

extending the term of existing

copyrights by 20 years so that no one

could do to Disney what Disney

did to the Brothers Grimm now when we

tried to challenge this going to the

Supreme Court getting the Supreme Court

the bunch of conservatives there if we

could get them to wake up to this to

strike it down

we had the assistance of Nobel Prize

winners including this right-wing Nobel

Prize winner Milton Friedman who said he

would join our brief only if the word

no-brainer was in the brief somewhere

but apparently no brains existed in this

place when Democrats passed and signed

this bill into law now tiny little

quibble of a footnote Sonny Bono you

might say was a Republican but I don’t

buy it this guy is okay our second

example think about this cultural hero

icon on the Left creator of this

character look at the site that he built

Star Wars mashup inviting people to come

and use their creative energy to produce

a new generation of attention towards

this extraordinarily important cultural

icon read the license the license for

these really mixers assigns all of the

rights to the remix back to Lucas the

mash-up is owned by Lucas indeed

anything you add to the mashup music you

might add Lucas has a worldwide

perpetual right to exploit that for free

there is no creator here to be

recognized the Creator doesn’t have any

rights the Creator is a sharecropper in

this story and we should remember who

employed the sharecroppers the Democrats

right so the point is the Republicans

here recognize that there’s a certain

need of ownership or respect for

ownership the respect we should give to

the Creator the remixer the owner the

property owner the copyright owner of

this extraordinarily powerful stuff and

not a generation of sharecroppers now I

think there are lessons we should learn

here lessons about openness our lives

our sharing activities at least in part

even for the head of Goldman Sachs

at least in part and for that sharing

activity to happen we have to have well

protected spaces of fair use that’s

number one number two the psychology of

sharing needs freedom within which to

creates freedom which means without

permission from anyone the ability to

create and number three we need to

respect the Creator the creator of these

remixes through rights that are directly

tied to them now this explains the

right-wing nonprofit Creative Commons

actually it’s not a right-wing profit

but of course let me just tie it here

are the Creative Commons which is

offering auteurs this simple way to mark

their content with the freedoms they

intended to carry so that we go from a

all rights reserved world to a some

rights reserved world so that people can

know the freedoms they have attached to

the content building and creating on the

basis of this creative copyrighted work

these tools that we’ve built enable this

sharing in parts through licenses that

make it clear and a freedom to create

without requiring permission first

because the permission has already been

granted and a respect for the creator

because it builds upon a copyright the

Creator HAP’s

licensed freely and it explains the vast

right-wing conspiracy that’s obviously

developed around these licenses as now

more than three hundred and fifty

million digital objects are out there

licensed freely in this way now that

picture of an ecology of creativity the

picture of an ecology of balanced

creativity is that the ecology of

creativity we have right now well as you

all know not many of us believe we do I

tripped on the reality of this ecology

of creativity just last week I created a

video which was based on a wire side

chat that I had given and I uploaded it

to YouTube I then got this email from

YouTube

weirdly notifying me that there was

content in that owned by the mysterious

W

mg that matched their Content ID so I

didn’t think much about it and then on

Twitter somebody said to me your talk on

YouTube was DMC age was that your

purpose imagining that I had this deep

conspiracy to reveal the obvious flaws

in the DMCA answer no I didn’t even

think about it but then I went to the

site and all of the audio in my site had

been silenced my whole 45 minute video

had been silenced because they were

snippets in that video a video about

fair use that included Warner Music

Group music now interestingly they still

sold ads for that music if you played

the silent video you can still buy the

music but you couldn’t hear anything

because it had been silenced so I did

what the current regime says I must do

to be free to use YouTube to talk about

fair use I went to this site and I had

to answer these questions and then in an

extraordinarily Bart Simpson like

juvenile way you’ve actually got to type

out these words and get them rights to

reassert your freedom to speak and I

felt like I was in third grade again I

will not put tacks on the teachers chair

I will not give tax on

teachers cheer this is absurd it is

outrageous it is extraordinary

perversion of the system of freedom we

should be encouraging and the question I

ask you is who’s fighting it well

interestingly in the last presidential

election who was the number one active

opponents of this system of regulation

in online speech John McCain letter

after letter attacking YouTube’s refusal

to be more respectful of fair use but

they’re extraordinary notice and

takedown system that led his campaign so

many times to be thrown off the internet

now that was a story of me then my good

old days of right-wing lunacy let me

come back to now now when I’m a live a

leftist I’m certainly left-handed so at

least a lefty and I wonder can we on the

Left expect to build this ecology of

freedom now in a world where we know the

extraordinary powerful

influences against it where even icons

of the left like this entertain and push

bills that would effectively ban the

requirement of open access for

government-funded research the president

who has supported a process that

secretly negotiates agreements which

effectively lock us into the insane

system of dense DMCA that we have

adopted and likely lock us down a path

of three strikes you’re out then of

course the rest of the world are

increasingly adopting not a single

example of reform has been produced yet

and we’re not going to see this change

in this system anytime soon so here’s

the lessons of openness that I think we

need to learn openness is a commitment

to a certain set of values we need to

speak of those values the value of

freedom it’s a value of community it’s a

value of the limits in regulation it’s a

value respecting the Creator now if we

can learn those values from

some influences on the right if we can

take them and incorporate them maybe we

could do a little trade we learn those

values on the left and maybe they’ll do

health care or global warming

legislation or something on the right

anyway please join me in teaching these

values thank you very much