Web Assignment 2

Occupy the Media Stream

            In the past few weeks its been hard to ignore this growing force across the United States known as #OccupyWallstreet. A group of protestors that have lived at Liberty Square for nearly the last month are protesting the 1% of Americans that have 45% of the wealth and the government standing by or helping those 1% to maintain their wealth. Its funny to think that Ad Busters the Canadian organization that started the protest started with no more than 200 and has grown to the multiple thousands that now participate in their daily marches on Wall Street and the only reason for the massive growth in support is thanks to a social media website that they created to spread their unorganized word. www.occupywallst.org is the grounds for this growth among other social media websites that have been very helpful to this cause. From their use of multiple sites like Youtube and Kickstarter there has been a gray area created as to copyrights in videos and photos that are being used.

            As of now on 10/10/2011 the first thing you see when bringing up the webpage is a video called Sign Language; it’s a montage of videos with people holding signs but this montage of videos is not what would be called to question it’s the backing track. They avoided having to take the video down by avoiding a major web video hosting website like Youtube. Vimeo an alternate to Youtube is not as heavily trafficked by the copyright police who consist of copyright lawyers hunting all day to find people that void copyright laws. This is an example of why like Lessig tells us we should deregulate amateur media, such as remix video’s like this that are harmless to the owner of the original content. Once the content is being sold for profit is where I see the line in the sand. If someone without permission is reselling an artist’s media be it music, still image, or video the resold media is illegal. Though in the case of remixed media it is no longer the same media as it started as therefore it shouldn’t be considered under the same copyright as the original media because it is no longer the same. In the case of the video on the homepage of Occupy Wall Street it would be a remix; the video is from the original creator and the backing track is not the full song so it is no longer the same which shouldn’t violate the copyright of the original song.    

            A more recent possibility of copyright infringement was when Slavoj Zizek spoke to the people at Liberty Square and was taped speaking. Occupy Wall Street posted these videos of Zizek without his permission though Zizek is not one to care about someone posting a public speech that he made but others do. This would be Lessig’s idea of decriminalizing the copy where people would no longer be considered a pirate for sharing a copy of another person’s work as long as it wasn’t money involved in the transaction. Lessig outlines the major flaw in Remix;

If copyright regulates copies, and copying is as common as breathing, then a law that triggers federal regulation on copying is a law that regulates too far.

Instead, Congress should adopt again its historical practice of specifying precisely the kinds of uses of creative work that should be regulated by copyright law.¹² The law should be triggered by uses that are presumptively, or likely to be, commercial uses in competition with the copyright owner’s use. The law should leave unregulated uses that have nothing to do with the kinds of uses the copyright owner needs to control. Copying, in this world, would not itself invoke federal regulation. Public performances, or public distributions, or commercial distribution, would.

This idea leads to abolishing the wrongful law suits that have brought upon so many people because of the major media agencies believing that all non-sold copies that they don’t get money for are as illegal as armed robbery. A re-evaluation of the copyright laws to only include specific commercial use of the material in question would be a much better system than the one that has grown into the media lawsuit monster that it has become.

            The Occupy Wall Street website has become a Mecca for counter-culture literature that will never see a copyright so should these lone writers have the same consideration as writers that have works that have copyrights. These works will remain in the public domain for the remainder of their circulation never to see the lush protection of a copyright; I see this as a good thing, within the realms of counter-culture literature. This allows for each individual piece to evolve as another reader sees fit if they want to modify or edit the original.