Lessig Response 3-5

While reading the next few chapters of Lessig’s “Remix” I was particularly interested in with the opening statement of chapter 3. Because how often do we retain information from just reading books, or listening to a song, or watching a movie…and then reiterate that quote or phrase or lyric to our friends because it means something to you. This is the RO culture that Lessig explains how we process and perform culture.

We’ve all used Napster, Limewire, Frostwire or some sort of file sharing host that allows you to download music for free. If you didn’t know, but it’s illegal to download free music because artists and producers pay a lot of money and time to record and release their albums to the public. That’s how they make a living as a career for them themselves and to build their record company’s brand as well as increasing popularity with fans. “The “natural” constraints of the analog world were abolished by the birth of digital technology” (Lessig). This then brought on the “piracy” law wars since there was no way to stop new technology from developing and/or redistributing copied music.

ITunes Music Store was proof that within three years of it being launched, 1 billion songs were downloaded in that time. “And while iTunes music was digital, iTunes tokens of digital culture contained a technology to limit their (re)distribution code (called FairPlay, a kind of Digital Rights Management, or DRM technology) was used to remake the code of digital tokens of RO culture” (Lessig).

Digital Technology is changing the way companies redistribute a lot of their material. For example, when the E-reader and Nooks came out, people did not have to physically go to the bookstore anymore to choose a book and read it in that same time they purchased it. Today we are seeing a faster approach to getting things when we want them in a higher demand.

***
The information that I learned and expanded on in class this afternoon relates to what I posted this morning about Lessig's Remix. The three layers of writing (in examples) on the internet are: writing a blog post, someone coming in and commenting on that blog, and then linking my blog onto a site for everyone to read that has similar opinions. This relates to what we do everyday in multimedia writing because we post blogs about what is currently a topic and then comment on each others, which is linked onto a website. We are generally using Lessig's 3 layers of writing on the internet.