In watching the interview between Lawrence Lessig and Stephen Colbert on copyright law, I think Lessig's argument was most neatly supported at the 3:50 mark. At that time, Colbert draws with marker all over a copy of Lessig's book to demonstrate a "remix". As Lessig points out, Colbert has just added value to the original work, causing that copy of "Remix" to net much more revenue than a mint copy of Lessig's work.
To me, this is the crux of the issue. In this example, obtaining the original copy of the book would have put revenue into Mr. Lessig's pocket. He should not be owed the additional revenue that Colbert has added to the book, because he was not responsible for it.
I am of the opinion that remixes benefit the original artist, because it opens up new possible markets for the original. If someone buys the Colbert original copy of "Remix" on Ebay at an elevated price, but happens to also read the book's content, whose to say they won't seek out more works by the same author? Speaking for myself, I found a lot of cool music via sampling by another artist (for example, the Beastie Boys album "Paul's Boutique" samples Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few).
I agree with Lessig that copyright laws are due for an overhaul, unfortunately, as I commented on someone else's blog, technology moves faster than the law...
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The problem of remixes becomes more complicated when you can sell more than the one copy you have purchased. Adding pictures or a signature to one purchased copy seems to have already benefited the author. It isn't the same as buying one copy of music from iTunes for $1.00, remixing the music, selling 1,000 copies for $1.00 each. It makes sense for a royalty fee per song at that point for the new remixed copies sold from the original artists' view.
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