Remix Is a Cultural Right

Lawrence Lessig on the ‘cultural right’ of the remix

clipped from www.law.virginia.edu Digital technology is accelerating the age-old cultural tradition of “remix,” according to Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, and producing an emerging free culture that our existing notions about copyright protection should not be allowed to obstruct. “Mix is the idea of taking ideas, expressions, putting them together and making something,” said Lessig. “Remix is the practice by which others take that [mix] and re-express it. Culture is remix. Knowledge is remix. Politics is remix. Everyone in the life of producing and creating engages in this practice of remix. “the practice of remix is free, in the sense of unregulated,” Lessig asserted. “We need no permission. . . . This tradition is free. At least with respect to the reader, you can say it’s absolutely free.” With the emergence of digital technology and its radical opportunities for remixing, the accidental harmony between copyright regulation and publishing technology is becoming dissonant.