Who Owns Culture? Authorship and Property Online (pt.3)

Marsha Hairston
Theory of Internet Writing
February 25, 2007
Dr. Lisa Maruca &
Dr. Caroline Maun


Free Culture
Puzzles



Puzzles or puzzling are the issues surrounding copyright laws, or what is “fair use” in this advance technological society. Protecting the right of the original creator and the individual that wants to build on the creation, seems to be very complex. Determining who is entitled to monetary gains as well as getting permission from the creator or owner of the product, seems quite challenging also.

The issue of file sharing has become increasingly complicated over the years. Lessig states that p2p file sharing is like ‘chimera”. Chimera is when an identical twin has two sets of DNA. This is somewhat puzzling. Lessig raises a question as to what laws or rule should govern file sharing or chimera? Determining whether a lawsuit should be filed when an individual shares a file with someone seems somewhat harsh. There are two schools of thought regarding file sharing, one is to legalize it and the other is to treat it like a felony. As Lessig pointed out in his writing, to make it zero tolerance would cause many innocent people to unknowingly become criminals, as well as hinder their creativity.

The issues surrounding “property”, “fair use”, who is entitled to what, getting permission from the originator before building on the creator’s idea, and file sharing is very convoluted. So much so, it is easy to understand how one could unknowingly be at risk of violating the law. Unfortunately, as innocent as the violation seems, it can cost an individual a lot, such as the case with the twelve (12) year old girl and the seventy-one (71) year old man.




Lawrence Lessig; Fair Use