Week 7 - Response 2 - Free Culture By Lessig Pgs 7-30

In the reading for this week, Lessig starts out with his main focus on the development of the Internet itself and then attempts to relate it to creativity and the concept of copyright. In the beginning of the reading, Lessig emphasizes that because oft he Internet, creativity has hindered progression due to the new laws that applies to the Internet. Lessig states that "The rough divide between the free and the controlled has now been erased. The Internet has set the stage for this erasure and, pushed by big media, the law has now effected it" (8). What this means is that people have found ways to bypass the laws that applied to commercial art/creativity, but due to the creation of the Internet, new rules have been made and copyright is either more frequent, or as stated before, bypassed. Such is the example of one artist by the name of Richard Prince. Discussed in class, Prince took photos of Instagram photos by other users, but with comments and put it in a gallery. The original photos were sold at a fairly low price ranging from $90-150, but Prince sold the photos for 90k. This matter is extremely controversial, but Prince managed to bypass the typical laws of copyright due to new laws online. The main law that was discussed in class is if the meaning changes, the art is now a new piece that one can claim for their own. This portion of the reading was the most important part as it had me thinking for long time about how we are not free as artists anymore. One can argue that we still are, but are we really if just anyone can basically replicate your work, make a few tweaks and be able to call it his/her own?