Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (Hardcover)

by Lawrence Lessig (Author)
Key Phrases: free culture, commercial and sharing, sharing economy, Second Life, Red Hat, Creative Commons (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Should anyone besides libertarian hackers or record companies care about copyright in the online world? In this incisive treatise, Stanford law prof and Wired columnist Lessig (Free Culture) argues that we should. He frames the problem as a war between an old read-only culture, in which media megaliths sell copyrighted music and movies to passive consumers, and a dawning digital read-write culture, in which audiovisual products are freely downloaded and manipulated in an explosion of democratized creativity. Both cultures can thrive in a hybrid economy, he contends, pioneered by Web entities like YouTube. Lessig's critique of draconian copyright laws—highlighted by horror stories of entertainment conglomerates threatening tweens for putting up Harry Potter fan sites—is trenchant. (Why, he asks, should sampling music and movies be illegal when quoting texts is fine?) Lessig worries that too stringent copyright laws could stifle such remix masterpieces as a powerful doctored video showing George Bush and Tony Blair lip-synching the song Endless Love, or making scofflaws of America's youth by criminalizing their irrepressible downloading. We leave this (copyrighted) book feeling the stakes are pretty low, except for media corporations. (Oct. 20)
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From The New Yorker
As Lessig, a law professor at Stanford, sees it, if intellectual-property law is left as it is an entire generation will be criminalized. He argues that the ways in which young people break copyright laws help them to become the sort of people we want them to be�creative and collaborative. Kids today are simply not going to give up downloading music and using copyrighted material in YouTube videos: they belong to a culture for which �remix� is �the essential art.� Lessig�s proposals for revising copyright are compelling, because they rethink intellectual-property rights without abandoning them. He argues that hybrids that combine the �commercial and sharing� economies can create value for both sides (as Harry Potter fan sites and Lostpedia have done); indeed, one problem is media companies� appropriating the work of fans without returning the favor. �When both benefit,� Lessig writes, �how do we say who is riding for free?�
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (October 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201722
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201721
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #139,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Handbook for a Creative Future!, December 3, 2008

By	Tama Leaver (Perth, Western Australia Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Remix is the culmination of Lawrence Lessig's tireless arguments about the importance of creativity being able to be built on the foundations of culture that already exists, a pathway only open if the extremes of copyright are sobered and a shared, free commons is actively promoted and created. Some of the arguments will be familiar from Lessig's previous book Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity but Remix takes them to a new depth. More to the point, Remix, despite being written by a lawyer, is an extremely accessible work that makes its arguments with humour and is easy to read. The argument is compelling, and Remix has a place in the libraries of schools and universities and the bookshelves of anyone interested in a creativity culture built on the successes of the past with the tools of the future.

(My only criticism would be this book is very US-centric, but that's Lessig's prerogative; others needs to extend these arguments beyond national boundaries.)

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Think of the children, December 3, 2008

By	Nathan Otto (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The core of this book is a question about what kind of world we want to create for future generations. Lessig presents an argument that the natural way humans interact with content is to remix it, as we are used to doing with text. Just as we take no offense when somebody quotes our text in their own communication, we should resist the urge to control "quoting" of our digital content.

This is a passionately written book, but it takes some engagement with the issue to really enjoy it. Starting with another of Lessig's books, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, might help a reader get into the subject, but once he or she realizes the consequences of culture's legal stance on this issue, Lessig's perspective becomes invaluable to have around. That book more sets out the conditions created by sharing economies, where Remix looks for how art and business can survive under these conditions.

Lessig's lessons on how businesses can thrive or fail as hybrids may help content-producers get a grip as the financial industry melts down.

The main point, as I said, is about the world and culture we create for our children. Do we want a world where they have free "speech" in hundreds of digital "languages", or one where their natural abilities are locked down? Lessig offers advice on how to change law and ourselves to create a culture where our children's expression is cherished (for the sake of their education and their community-building). He wants to start a conversation about how business can thrive among sharing economies as well. This book will be a key perspective in that conversation.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is important., December 3, 2008

By	Brandon Billups "frustrated college guy" (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

And it's important because it focuses on something that seems to be totally ignored by everyone except Lawrence Lessig, and that's the idea that an entire generation of young people are self-identifying as criminals for doing something that, to them, is totally normal.

Lessig also talks about sharing/commercial/hybrid economies, and elucidates the differences in each of them.

The anecdotes throughout the book are all enjoyable, interesting, and serve as profound, thoughtful backup to all of Lessig's main points, making the book easily readable for anyone not an intellectual property scholar.

Overall Lessig presents a compelling, well-reasoned angle on a situation that gets a completely inappropriate treatment nearly everywhere else.