Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is Lawrence Lessig's fifth book. The book was made available for free download and remixingDownload Lessig's Remix, Then Remix It on wired.com (May 2005) under the CC BY-NCRemix on lessig.org Creative Commons license via Bloomsbury Academic.remix on Bloomsbury Academic (2008, archived) It is still available via the Internet Archive. It details a hypothesis about the societal effect of the Internet, and how this will affect production and consumption of popular culture to a "remix culture".
Summary
In Remix, Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and a respected voice in what he deems the "copyright wars", describes the disjuncture between the availability and relative simplicity of remix technologies and copyright law. Lessig insists that copyright law as it stands now is antiquated for digital media since every "time you use a creative work in a digital context, the technology is making a copy".Lessig, Lawrence. 2008. Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York: Penguin Press. p. 71 Thus, amateur use and appropriation of digital technology is under unprecedented control that previously extended only to professional use.
Lessig insists that knowledge and manipulation of multi-media technologies is the current generation's form of "literacy"- what reading and writing was to the previous. It is the vernacular of today. The children growing up in a world where these technologies permeate their daily life are unable to comprehend why "remixing" is illegal. Lessig insists that amateur appropriation in the digital age cannot be stopped but only 'criminalized'. Thus most corrosive outcome of this tension is that generations of children are growing up doing what they know is "illegal" and that notion has societal implications that extend far beyond copyright wars. The book is now available as a free download under one of the Creative Commons' licenses (CC BY-NC 3.0Remix on remix.lessig.orgRemix on scribd.com).
Read-only culture vs. read/write culture Lessig outlines two cultures - the read-only culture (RO) and the read/write culture (RW). The RO culture is the culture we consume more or less passively. The information or product is provided to us by a 'professional' source, the content industry, that possesses an authority on that particular product/information. Analog technologies inherently supported RO culture's business model of production and distribution and limited the role of the consumer to just that, 'consuming'.
Digital technology, however, does not have the 'natural' constraints of the analog that preceded it. "What before was both impossible and illegal is now just illegal"(38). Steve Jobs was the first to see potential in this new market made possible by digital technology. RO culture had to be recoded in order to compete with the "free" distribution made possible by the Internet. iTunes Music store was proof of this. While it provided digital music it was protected by a digital rights management (DRM) code from re-distribution. Lessig uses this key example to show that it is possible to achieve a business model which balances access and control and is equally attractive to both the consumers and the creators. In addition, digital technologies have changed the way we think about 'access'. Today, most of us would never structure our day around a particular program because we know that it is most likely available online - even if it is not necessarily free of charge. Lessig insists, using Amazon as his premiere example, that the future of entertainment and advertising lies in accumulating information about a consumer and tailoring the product to their preferences.
As opposed to RO culture, Read/Write culture has a reciprocal relationship between the producer and the consumer. Taking works, such as songs, and appropriating them in private circles is exemplary of RW culture, which was considered to be the 'popular' culture before the advent of reproduction technologies. The technologies and copyright laws that soon followed, however, changed the dynamics of popular culture. As it became professionalized people were taught to defer production to the professionals.
Lessig posits that digital technologies provide the tools for reviving RW culture and democratizing production. He uses blogs to explain the three layers of this democratization. Blogs have redefined our relationship to the content industry as they allowed access to non-professional content. The 'comments' feature that soon followed provided a space for readers to have a dialogue with the amateur contributors. 'Tagging' of the blogs by users based on the content provided the necessary layer for users to filter the sea of content according to their interest. The third layer added bots that analyzed the relationship between various websites by counting the clicks between them and, thus, organizing a database of preferences. The three layers working together established an "ecosystem of reputation"(61) that served to guide users through the blogosphere. Lessig uses the blog model to demonstrate a wider conclusion - while there is no doubt many amateur online publications cannot compete with the validity of professional sources, the democratization of digital RW culture and the 'ecosystem of reputation' provides a space for many talented voices to be heard that was not available in the pre-digital RO model.
Hybrid economies There are three economies that Lessig introduced in his book. The first is the commercial economy. He says that commercial economies at their very center value money the most and build value around the monetary. Second to this is the sharing economy which completely ignores money as an item of value and instead focuses on valuing things that are not monetary. But settled in between the two is a third, the hybrid economy. He asserts that the hybrid economy will be the dominant force with the rise of the web, and in order for it thrive the two economies from which it borrows from must be preserved. Conceptually the monetizing nature from the commercial, and the 'lending' quality of the sharing economy are necessary to ensure that the hybrid doesn't lose sight of economic gain or doesn't lose the willingness to obtain economic resources.
The internet and commons
The internet is essentially the hub for this type of economy. With more people utilizing it as a platform for sharing and monetizing, the internet's primary function is split in two. In order for people to 'Remix' they need the internet for its open and free design.
Remix, according to Lessig, is not solely digital, but also relates to the act of reading and applying texts to their personal life. Culturally, critically taking in what is going on (the original content) and developing an opinion that can be shared and given transformed meaning, is also considered remixing.
Most of the debate in Remix is in regard to ownership. Due to the fact that remixing is limitless, it becomes difficult to end. Every mix becomes a resource for another new mix and expands to others even if they are never seen. When it comes to the internet, ownership has become a murky subject. Companies who originated a piece of work are owners of that product, but only if it is copyrighted and protected legally. That being said, people without access to these legalities are unprotected and liable to get their ideas and content stolen. This is where the commons becomes prevalent.
He defines the commons as resources that are available for everyone equally in a certain group. The internet was invented for flexible accessibility and thus facilitates innovation. This is Lessig's philosophy, however the issue comes with a price tag. The fight to define who owns a creative work of art if it contains other works not owned by the party is what Lessig says is "killing creativity". Although people have become used to this, he argues that it is for this reason that he claims that it is an attempt at "counterrevolution".
Free software
Richard Stallman is vocal about his stance on the positive repercussions of utilizing free software, namely Linux. Essentially both Stallman and Lessig are on the same page. When it comes to 'hybrid' economies, Linux fits the description with its selling point being "benefits", instead of "features". This on its own has no standing for 'justice' but rather the profitability of such a software.
Remixing is this software's very nature. The appeal is to "sell" the benefits of its use. People no longer have to wait for a company to fix bugs, or other issues with the software and instead they can collaborate and ultimately do it themselves. This can be done with other software, but the downside is that legally with paid proprietary software there are repercussions to prevent, the software from being "remixed" and sold as an alternative "original"'.
The prevalence of YouTube
With the internet comes what Lessig described as community spaces, with site YouTube up for major debate for its ability to both provide original content and exist as an open bank for content to Remix. The website provides users a domain to not only consume, but to make creative content. Creativity in this sense, relates to the combining of elements or materials with an individual's original ideas to create a unique product. Lessig has had his own fight with the platform when his Lecture got taken down in 2013 on grounds of violating Copyright laws due to a song from the band Phoenix being used in part of the presentation. However, due to the non-commercialized and transformed nature of his usage, the video should have fallen under Fair use. This issue is an example of exactly what he is fighting for.
In addition to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, YouTube also allows the claimant to place advertisements on the video. This is done as retribution for using or allowing copyrighted media in the video, and allows the user to keep the video up without having to deal with legalities. The website is taking the emphasis off of the creation, and placing it on the monetary value that it holds. Lessig argues that these issues should be separated when it comes to amateur non commercialized content.
With growing frequency, YouTube has begun copyright striking, and taking down videos that appear to have claimed content in them in any way. Without the claim in question, to be the main feature in the video, it can merely be a song playing in the background that can take a user's work off the web. While original content featuring sole a user's own ideas and content does exist, this is not the focus of Remixing, or Lessig's point. It is not solely creating new and unique ideas with novelty resources, but instead pulling from multiple sources to give way to new products.
To that Lessig's rebuttal is that the work made on such platforms should be free of legal ownership aside from its originator. These new products leverage the references in their original work in order to build a new and different meaning; which has no implications of being 'better' or 'worse' than its origin.
The remix