One of Lessig's concerns, discussed in his book, is the copyright law. He's not oppose to it as there is still some good in it, benefits such as it promotes more people to be creative and convince them that they are able to make money out of their work, since their work are protected under the law. But he thinks that there should be some limit of how long is a certain intellectual object should be protected under this law.
At least there are two different views on this issue. Big media companies are the intermediaries who hold the rights over the copyrighted objects. They are in favor of copyright term extension since they will keep making profit out of intellectual property so long as the object is still protected. Other people must pay (or ask for permissions) if they wish to make use of the intellectual object. People like Lessig think that this is good for profit-making, but it would harm the humanity in other ways. The urge to be creative, or to express our ideas and actually turn it into a reality, and to share it with other people is limited. Copyright term extension has put constrained on the tools that many people depend upon to create new ideas, to invent new things. We are human, it is almost impossible to create new things out of nothing, we use ideas from others. If everything is protected forever, then there will be limited number of new inventions in the future.
When I saw the creative commons website in class, I think that it is a convincing alternative to copyright. People can share their intellectual work without worrying too much whether other people will take this idea and sell it in the market. It is against the law as creative commons license still protect some of the rights of the owner of the intellectual property, namely the right to make profit out of it. At the same time, people are still able to be creative without putting themselves at the risk of being sued by the big media companies as this is totally legal. I personally think that creative commons is the kind of balance we are looking for, which is the balance between the exclusive rights over an intellectual object and at the same time letting others to make use of the object.
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I personally agree with Fadhilah’s posting. However, I would like to add my opinion on the copyright issue. Youtube.com is a website that act as an intermediaries, provides users to upload any media-related materials as long as they do not upload any copyrighted materials. However, there are still hundreds or even thousands of movies, music videos or TV clips that are unauthorized are being uploaded. Sometimes, the videos uploaded by the users are based from his or her creativity, but a problem arises if the individual uses a copyrighted material as the background song. For instance, there was a woman that recorded the dancing of her son, following the rhythm of Prince’s song. She posted it on Youtube, and in the next four months, Universal Music Group sent a warning letter to Youtube, demanding them to remove the video immediately because of the use of Prince’s song. The statement that Fadhilah pointed out regarding that, it is almost impossible for human, to create new things out of nothing is agreeable. The same thing goes for this problem that I stated just now, in which the woman’s son created a new dance but using Prince’s song. She still uploaded a video that based on her son’s creativity, not stealing other people’s creativity. For me, it is not fair to put all the blame to her.
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