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Lessig, Lawrence. ""Creatives face a closed Net." 28 December 2005
Lessig writes about the recent development of a record company, Wind-Up Records, requesting AnimeMusicVideos.org (perhaps the largest online collection of anime music videos and "AMV" artists) to remove all links to music videos containing music by their artists. These artists included Evanescence and Creed, bands popular among fans and with a large number of music videos on the site, roughly 3,000. He points to the AMV movement as a sign of the growing read-write culture allowed by the internet and computers that new generations are increasingly participating in. Where content owners try to enforce a "Read-Only" environment where viewers/users can look, but not touch, Lessig advocates the development of creativity and benefits thereof for those (often young) fans who take it upon themselves to add to the artistic tableau of a medium. He even relates a personal anecdote about his son, in which the only way he was accepted to a prominent university was by showing them the AMVs he had made as an example of his artistic talent. Lessig sees the struggle between copyright holders and young, artistically motivated fans as the new battle to be fought, and one in which it should be easy to see which side is in the right. Of course, according to current US copyright law (backed by copyright holding corporations) such employment of "Read-Write" culture is illegal. The internet, however, has afforded both an opportunity to put such artistic expression on easy display and an at least temporary hurdle for content owners to leap in order to stomp down on "unfair" uses due to its expanse and level of anonymity.
In this work, Lessig describes how the architecture of the internet was designed to foster creation and innovation, and how recent changes in the law and behavior of the internet are serving to stifle the very creation that has flourished on the internet.
A nine minute student documentary of the Free Culture New York Summit held at Columbia University, January 2006. The film explores a new form of student activism, based primarily on and about the Internet. Beginning with the Free Culture demonstration at the Times Square Virgin Megastore, the documentary covers Free Culture members out to educate consumers on alternative forms of music distribution online (archive.org, ccmixter.org, blogs, etc). It continues the discussion with interviews featuring conference participants (Cory Doctorow, Creative Commons, Free Culture students activists). Finally, using cc licenses for distribution and production, the film acts as an example for other young student filmmakers who are interested in alternative copyright licensing.