The Frame

Book Notes: Remix by Lawrence Lessig

I found Remix more engaging, though less informative than Code. A different book, to be sure. Where Code focuses on the ‘architecture’ of innovations, Remix makes a mainstream appeal to renovate the copyright code and end the ‘war’ on piracy. In Lessig’s view, the battle between the RIAA and file sharing is not a zero-sum game. There are many ways to go about reform that would increase the public’s ability to engage with copyrighted content without harming the owners of the intellectual property.

Lessig’s problem is that his presentations are so effective that people are going to stop reading his books. Watching this video gives you all the highlights in less than an hour.

I do have one challenge to his argument. A large section of the book is about what it takes to succeed—or profit—in a “hybrid” culture. Lessig praises companies like Flickr for catering to their customers, for offering content freely and engaging a community. Because of Flickr’s willingness to offer a free product, his argument goes, they have built a valuable community and is able to profit while maintaining an enthusiastic community. But how much money are these companies really making? He throws youtube in the same category, omitting the fact that youtube has yet to turn a profit for google. For the most part, Lessig remains grounded in his optimism for the web, but when youtube is an example of success in the hybrid economy, perhaps we should curb our enthusiasm.

I Contain Multitudes | The Weekly Pile-Up (4/10/09)

• The New York Public Library Digital Gallery presents a collection of author portraits: Authors: Photographs from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. A lot of Walt. I like the Conrad bust. (via: Readerville)
• This week in fear-mongering: Mark McKinnon blames the conficker virus on p2p networks. The article sounds more like a paid advertisement by the RIAA: “Whatever the girls were downloading for ‘free,’ it’s a pretty safe bet that it could have been bought for less than two grand [the amount of a tax refund the girls’ family lost due to a p2p networking leak].”
• Apparently, journalists are not expected to practice journalism, as demonstrated in this article where ‘Fox & Friends’ reporters were not held liable for reporting an obvious satire—from a website that lets anyone write news stories—as real news.
• William H. Gass’ library. (via: The Rumpus)