Is copyright an obstacle to social and technological progress?

“As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?” (Bill Gates, 1976) Bill Gates showed his felling about free software. There are two extreme of internet trend. One aspect is when the creators of product or software need to be rewarded for their work. While other extreme try to use the product for free (free culture)

The emerging of internet is also followed by the idea of consumption. Internet trend make an adjustment to market demand. Today we are familiar with corporate website, E-commerce, E-tailing, pay-to-view, pay-per-read, Web 2.0 buy outs, etc.

These interactions shape the culture of internet. When we talk about culture of internet there are two different types of cultures that are functioning. Lessig (2006) said that there are read only and read write culture. Read only culture is the massively efficient technology for enabling people anytime and anywhere to buy and consume culture or we call it commercial economy. Music store and video provided by company, is engaging to these practice of increasingly their market for the buying of culture. The increasing of market also leads to the increasing of control over how people use and consume culture. Radically different, read write culture is interested in consuming the culture aspect but also creating and sharing the creativity. YouTube and Wikipedia are two of the examples. People do read write culture for community. They do what they love and it is not because of money or we call it sharing economy.

Lawrence Lessig comes to balance the extreme between free culture and controlled culture. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom” and “A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state” (Lawrence Lessig, 2004).

Reference

Lessig, L (2004) Free Culture - How Big Free Culture - How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. www.lessig.org.

Lawrence Lessig - October 3 2006. video. Author@google. Viewed 4 December 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xbRE_H5hoU>