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REMIX 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd i 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:23:54:23 AAMM 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd iiii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:23:54:23 AAMM Also by Lawrence Lessig Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace The Future of Ideas Free Culture Code: Version 2.0 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd iiiiii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:23:54:23 AAMM 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd iivv 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:24:54:24 AAMM REMIX Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy LAWRENCE LESSIG B L O O M S B U R Y 80706 i-xxiv 001-328 r4nk.indd v 8/12/08 1:54:24 AM First published in the United States by The Penguin Press 2008 First published in Great Britain 2008 Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 36 Soho Square London W1D 3QY www.bloomsburyacademic.com Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2008 CC 2008 Lawrence Lessig. This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9-781-4081-1374-9 This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc 80706 i-xxiv 001-328 r4nk.indd vi 8/12/08 1:54:24 AM To two teachers, L. Ray Patterson and Jack Valenti 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd vviiii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:24:54:24 AAMM 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd vviiiiii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:24:54:24 AAMM CONTENTS Preface xiii INTRODUCTION 1 Part I: Cultures 1. CULTURES OF OUR PAST 23 RW Culture Versus RO Culture 28 Limits in Regulation 31 2. CULTURES OF OUR FUTURE 34 3. RO, EXTENDED 36 Nature Remade 38 Re- remaking Nature 40 Recoding Us 43 4. RW, REVIVED 51 Writing Beyond Words 53 Remixed: Text 57 Remixed: Media 68 The Signifi cance of Remix 76 The Old in the New 82 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd iixx 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:24:54:24 AAMM 5. CULTURES COMPARED 84 Differences in Value— and “Values” 84 Differences in Value (As in $) 88 Differences in Value (As in “Is It Any Good?”) 90 Differences in Law (As in “Is It Allowed?”) 97 Lessons About Cultures 105 Part II: Economies 6. TWO ECONOMIES: COMMERCIAL AND SHARING 117 Commercial Economies 119 Three Successes from the Internet’s Commercial Economy 122 Three Keys to These Three Successes 128 Little Brother 132 The Character of Commercial Success 141 Sharing Economies 143 Internet Sharing Economies 155 The Paradigm Case: Wikipedia 156 Beyond Wikipedia 162 What Sharing Economies Share 172 7. HYBRID ECONOMIES 177 The Paradigm Case: Free Software 179 Beyond Free Software 185 8. ECONOMY LESSONS 225 Parallel Economies Are Possible 225 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd x 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:25:54:25 AAMM Tools Help Signal Which Economy a Creator Creates For 226 Crossovers Are Growing 227 Strong Incentives Will Increasingly Drive Commercial Entities to Hybrids 228 Perceptions of Fairness Will in Part Mediate the Hybrid Relationship Between Sharing and Commercial Economies 231 “Sharecropping” Is Not Likely to Become a Term of Praise 243 The Hybrid Can Help Us Decriminalize Youth 248 Part III: Enabling the Future 9. REFORMING LAW 253 1. Deregulating Amateur Creativity 254 2. Clear Title 260 3. Simplify 266 4. Decriminalizing the Copy 268 5. Decriminalizing File Sharing 271 10. REFORMING US 274 Chilling the Control Freaks 274 Showing Sharing 276 Rediscovering the Limits of Regulation 280 CONCLUSION 289 Acknowledgments 295 Notes 299 Index 319 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd xxii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:25:54:25 AAMM 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd xxiiii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:26:54:26 AAMM PREFACE n early 2007, I was at dinner with some friends in Berlin. We I were talking about global warming. After an increasingly intense exchange about the threats from climate change, one overeager American at the table blurted, “We need to wage a war on carbon. Governments need to mobilize. Get our troops on the march!” Then he fell back into his chair, proud of his bold resolve, sipping a bit too much of the wildly too-expensive red wine. It was obvious that my friend was speaking metaphorically. Car- bon is not an “enemy.” Not even an American marine could fi ght it. Yet, as I looked around the table, a kind of reticence seemed to fl oat above our German companions. “What does that look mean?” I asked one of my friends. After a short pause, he almost whispered, “Germans don’t like war.” The response sparked a rare moment of recognition (in me). Of course, no one was talking about using guns to fi ght carbon. Or even carbon polluters. Yet, for obvious reasons, the associations with war in Germany are strongly negative. The whole country, but especially Berlin, is draped in constant reminders of the costs of that country’s twentieth- century double blunder. But in America, associations with war are not necessarily 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd xxiiiiii 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:26:54:26 AAMM xiv PREFACE negative. I don’t mean that we are a war- loving people; I mean that our history has allowed us to like the idea of waging war. Not out of choice, but as a remedy to a great wrong. War is a sacrifi ce that we have made, and in one recent case at least, a sacrifi ce to a very good end. We thus romanticize that sacrifi ce. That romance in turn allows the metaphor to spread into other social or political confl icts. We wage war on drugs, on poverty, on terrorism, on racism. There is a war on government waste, a war on crime, a war on spam, a war on guns, and a war on cancer. As Pro- fessors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson describe, each of these “wars” produces a “network of entailments.” Those entailments then frame and drive social policy. As they put it, in discussing President Carter’s “moral equivalent of war” speech: There was an “enemy,” a “threat to national security,” which required “setting targets,” “reorganizing priorities,” “establishing a new chain of command,” “plotting new strategy,” “gathering intelligence,” “marshaling forces,” “imposing sanctions,” “calling for sacrifi ces,” and on and on. The WAR metaphor highlighted certain realities and hid others. The metaphor was not merely a way of viewing reality; it constituted a license for policy change and political and economic action. The very acceptance of the metaphor provided grounds for certain interferences: there was an external, foreign, hostile enemy (pictured by cartoonist in Arab headdress); energy needed to be given top priorities; the populace would have to make sacrifi ces; if we didn’t meet the threat we would not survive.1 A fi ght for survival has obvious implications. Such fi ghts get waged without limit. It is cowardly to question the cause. Dissent is 8807060706 ii-xxiv-xxiv 0001-32801-328 rr4nk.indd4nk.indd xxiviv 88/12/08/12/08 11:54:26:54:26 AAMM PREFACE xv an aid to the enemy— treason, or close enough. Victory is the only result one may contemplate, at least out loud. Compromise is always defeat. These entailments make obvious sense during confl icts such as World War II, when there really was a fi ght for survival; my spark of Lakoffi an recognition, however, was to see just how danger- ous these entailments are when the war metaphor gets applied in contexts in which, in fact, survival is not at stake. Think, for example, about the “war on drugs.” Fighting debilitating chemical addiction is no doubt an important social objective. I have seen fi rsthand the absolute destruction it causes. But the “war on drugs” metaphor prevents us from recognizing that there may be other, more important objectives that the war is threatening. Think about the astonishingly long prison terms facing even small- time dealers— the Supreme Court, for example, has upheld a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the possession of 672 grams of cocaine.2 Think about ghettos burdened by the drug trade. Think about governments in Latin America that have no effectively independent judiciary or even army because the wealth produced by prohibition enables the drug lords to capture their control. And then think about the fact that this war has had essentially no effect on terminating the supply of drugs. One doesn’t notice these inconvenient truths in the middle of a war. To see them, you need a truce. You need to step back from the war to ask, How much is it really costing? Are the results really worth the price? The inspiration for this book is the copyright wars, by which right- thinking sorts mean not the “war” on copyright “waged” by “pirates” 80706 i-xxiv 001-328 r4nk.indd xv 8/12/08 1:54:26 AM xvi PREFACE but the “war” on “piracy,” which “threatens” the “survival” of certain important American industries.