Reading from Free Culture (1-30)

     Finished more of my reading from "Free Culture" earlier today, and gotta say "wow". I actually got interested in the subject matter pretty early on and read further than I meant to as I found this discussion on intellectual property and creativity interesting.
     Lessig does a good job of examining the forces at play in the war against piracy. He discusses how Walter Disney's big breakout success "Steamboat Willie" was a creation that parodied Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill, Jr." as a cartoon. This source material wasn't the only thing that Disney "borrowed" as he also utilized the idea of synchronized sound from Keaton as well, since Keaton had pioneered this concept with the movie "The Jazz Singer" a year prior. The success of Disney's "Steamboat Willie" helped create the grand company that exists today.
     The question is, how was this okay for Disney to "borrow" these ideas and source material and end up profiting from them? The answer is that Disney didn't simply copy Keaton's material and try to ship it out for a profit, he applied his own ideas to the mix to make it something unique. In this case, it was creating a cartoon that was heavily inspired by "Steamboat Bill, Jr." and capitalized on adding the synchronized sound element as well, which was an industry first. This was Disney's contribution to the source or the material that he drew his creation from.
     Fast forward to today, and you have a different kind of picture when it comes to creation and intellectual property. With the widespread adoption of the internet as a means of communicating, sharing ideas, and sharing creations, there is a new front that the heavy hitters of several industries such as movies (The Motion Picture Association of America) and music (The Recording Industry Association of America) are having to fight in the name of defending their intellectual property.
This means that if you make your own creation, yet were influenced by the works of something that you saw or heard, you might risk receiving your very own cease and desist letter or worse. At least, if the thing that you drew that inspiration from was being actively protected by powers like those described above.
     The problem with the law is that in many cases it is declared that you must get the creator's permission if you want to do something using that created piece. As Lessig states, "scientists build upon the work of other scientists without asking or paying for the privileged". Progress in the fields of science would stagnate right into the ground if this were the case.
    Lessig then goes on to discuss the differences between the United State and Japan in regards to how copyright infringement is viewed. That although the written law is very similar between the two countries, how they are implemented differs in many areas.He looks at the thriving manga industry as an example. In Japan, manga is commercially successful and a part of that countries culture. Yet, there exists special kinds of comics that function as copycats of other manga comics, these copycats are known as Doujinshi. These comics may appear to be pure copies at first glance, but actually contain contributions on the part of the comic creators. This is what separates Doujinshi from being straight copies of their source material. This contribution to the original is much like how Disney made his creation with the source material of Keaton's movie and concept of synchronized sound.
    Lessig makes the argument that Doujinshi comics are good for the manga industry as a whole, which he discovered after his own investigation while living in Japan for four months.
    His argument is an interesting one to consider when brought out of just the manga industry and instead if applied at a greater scope across all forms of media. If one takes a source material and makes his own contributions to it to make it his own, is that different than "stealing"? Lessig thinks so, and so do I.