Creative Common is one of the most visible protagonists in ‘remix culture’, and in recent years, it has become mainstream. The inventor of Creative Common Lawrence Lessig explained that the “culture of remix as a paradigmatic turn from a passive read-only culture to an active read-and-write culture” (Medosch, 2008:75). CC is international working non-profit organization, it makes it different from those ‘piracy’ for commercial profit. As CC explained on its own website:＂Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation．＂
As a university student, I found that Creative Common is very useful and helpful, it allows me to adopt other people’s idea and work freely and share with others whenever I want. Criticizes of Creative Common argued that it is a form of giving up copyrights and intellectual property, but CC will allow its creator to choose and mix between different levels of freedom and protection, that’s the creator’s own intention for the work to share or not with other people. While the work is published by CC, the author will still retain ‘some rights”, like Medosch, at the time his book were sold as hard copies, he allowed a PDF under a CC licence.
I would like remain to use CC to share stuffs and looking for entertainment. CC helped many unwell-known creator become available to the public, without CC, we might have no ideas how great these works are!!
Reference:
Armin Medosch, ‘Paid in Full: Copyright, Piracy and the Real Currency of Cultural Production’, in Deptforth. TV Diaries II: Pirate Strategies. London: Deptforth TV, 2008, pp75
Medosch argues that: “piracy, despite being an entirely commercially motivated activity carried out in black or grey markets, fulfills culturally important functions” (Reader, page 318), give an example online.
I agree with Medosch’s argument that the word ‘piracy’ is not all the time stand for bad morality, sometimes, and especially for those people who live in the third world, ‘piracy’ means the only way to access to other cultures, or in Medosch words, “fulfills culturally important functions” (2008:81).
Medosch argues that historically, piracy has developed in South East Asia when “colonial powers created a monopoly or oligopoly which robbed people of their livelihoods and left them no other chance” (2008:80), and Medosch further explains that contemporary principle of piracy is quite similar with the old sense, since “large media corporations stifle local cultural productions by completely taking over marketing and distribution channels”, therefore, for local media business, it’s very hard to survive under the pressure of large media monopoly the market, as a result, there are less local goods and cultural diverse produced (Medosch 2008:80), as we can see in today’s film market, there are full of Hollywood production, no matter in which region, except America, there are lack of local movie produced.
Anyways, back to piracy, Medosch found that in the East, “every major city has its pirate market” (2008:80), and as a citizen of Republic of China, I have to admit that Medosch’s statement is true. From my own experience, once I planned to buy some piracy DVDs in Beijing’s pirate market, I found that those piracy DVDs are all mystical disappeared, but after I asked the seller where I can purchase them, he took me to the back of his store, and told me that since the police always raid on them, they have to hide them appropriately, and waiting for customer enquire. There are definitely people who with “mortality” will criticize the person like me who support the piracy market, Medosch has argued for us that “piracy fulfils an important role by giving access to cultural goods which otherwise would be completely unavailable to the vast majority of people” (2008:81).
The film which is directed by He JianJun supported Medosch’s argument effectively. Art movie is prohibited by Chinese government since they considered it relates to pornography and not appropriate for under age people to watch, the scene the seller argued with the policeman whether the movie In the Realm of the Senses is pornography or not demonstrates people desire to access other cultures freely rather than the law allow them to access. Another example Medosch addresses in his article is in Brazil’s favelas, the only way for slum-dwellers to access to modern communication technologies is to go to “LAN houses”, use black market computers and pirated software to achieve their “civil rights and get better chance on the labor market” (2008:82).
Overall, there is not all bad aspects of piracy, despite n there are people use it to make commercial profits, and make thousands of people lose their jobs, but there are still aspects we can consider it is “good”, especially when “it gives people access to information and cultural goods they had otherwise no chance of obtaining” (Medosch 2008:81).
Bibliography:
Armin Medosch, ‘Paid in Full: Copyright, Piracy and the Real Currency of Cultural Production’, in Deptforth. TV Diaries II: Pirate Strategies, London: Deptforth TV, 2008, pp.73-97.
Burgess and Green argue that: ordinary people who become celebrities through their own creative efforts “remain within the system of celebrity native to, and controlled by, the mass media”,give an example of a YouTube video.
Burgess and Green have argued that the emergence of YouTube represents a disruption to existing media business models, and a new media power is emerging with it (2009:14). YouTube launches a platform for many amateur videos, while there are many ‘stars’ emerging with their talent and creative videos. As a result, many analysts compare these YouTube ‘stars’ to celebrities, but Burgess and Green still argue that “ordinary people who become celebrities through their own creative efforts remain controlled by the mass media” (2009:23). I agree with Burgess and Green’s argument since these citizen celebrities still unable to “pass through the gate-keeping mechanisms of old media” (Burgess & Green, 2009:24).
Celebrities are often famous for famous. They attract the public media attention basically through the mass media, in the form of TV, radio, and the coverage of newspaper, even in this computerization era, celebrities owns their own blogs to self-promote their selves, in this way, celebrities are inevitable controlled by the mainstream media. According to Nick Couldry (2003:37), in the mainstream media, for ordinary people, there is inequality to “gain access to the modes of representation of the mass media”, although the “ordinary world” are disguise and reproduce the “media world”, to pursue the same attention that celebrities get. Grossman explains the meaning of amateur video as “a common assumption underlying the most celebratory accounts of the democratization of cultural production is that raw talent combined with digital distribution can convert directly to legitimate success and media fame” (2006a,2006b). However, in Burgess and Green’s view, they see these potential celebrities represent as ‘demoticization’ rather than ‘democratization’ (2009:23), which means that ‘ordinary celebrities’ just relies on the existing structures of celebrities in media culture, in another words, they can’t be ‘famous’ in an alternative way, they are produced and captured by the mainstream media, just like celebrities native to play to mass market interests (Burgess & Green, 2009: 23).
The example I choose from YouTube video is “Leave Britney Alone”, this video achieve a huge success in YouTube which gains nearly forty million hits by now. Burgess and Green argue that there are YouTube celebrities who are famous for being “notorious, obnoxious, or annoying” (2009:24), the creator Chris Crocker is certainly one of them. Throughout his video, I hear nothing important except his annoying crying voices, and I couldn’t recognize his gender when I first watch the video, and I also found there are many people asking about his gender in their comments. If Chris Crocker would be considered as a ‘celebrity’, he will only achieved by ongoing status keep participating in YouTube. As a result, YouTubers who own ‘celebrities dream’ like Chris will hardly to achieve, since the mainstream media won’t recognize such unvalued person. Chris Croker will only be mentioned by the public when they need funny materials.
Bibliography:
Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, ‘YouTube and The Mainstream Media’ in YouTube: Online and Participatory Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009, pp.15-37
2. Nick Couldry and James Curran Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World, Rowman & Littlefield Publish, 2003, pp. 37.
Grossman, L. (2006a, Times best inventions. [Electronic version]. Times Magazine, Retrieved November 21, 2007.
Grossman, L. (2006b). Time’s person of the year: You. Times Magazine, (December 13, 2006) Retrieved November 21, 2007.
Xi Chen (Tracy) 