Remixing Science › From The Lab Bench

"In his book Remix, Lawrence Lessig documents two different cultures in today’s media landscape: A Read-Only (RO) culture that has historically been the business model of the publishing, broadcast, film and music industries, and a Read/Write (RW) culture that has been empowered by digital technologies. A read only culture consumes, providing big profits for large broadcast and publishing industries – think Hollywood, iTunes music and other strictly copyrighted art. But Lessig argues that it is important not to limit amateur creativity with overly strict copyright laws, in the “copyright wars” that have plagued the creative industry, artists and members of the general public in recent decades as digital technologies have increasingly made sharing and 'remixing' possible. While Analog technology made sharing hard, digital technology has made it second nature. Digital technology provides the tools for democratizing production and 'remixing' of content. As Lessig seems to argue, it is the epitome of sharing, creativity and even knowledge and education for youth today. Lessig asks, are we going to keep pursuing the 'copyright wars' of yesterday until the sharing and creative production that our youth know today as second nature essentially makes a majority of them criminals? ..."