After watching the video on copyright laws with Larry Lessig, my biggest takeaway was the highlighting of common sense, and how it does not allow for true free creation. Mr. Lessig is right in pointing out that when you factor in the dawn of man from the time we were closer to apes than anything else, there is no true original content at this point. Everything at this point is essentially a “copy” of a copy.

How much should users of the web think about copyright as you and others share, re-share, and remix content on the web?

Users of the web is a broad blanket statement. Casual users of the web don’t need to worry about copyright issues. Creators on/of the web however, unfortunately have to be very mindful of taking this into account. I recently had an experience with that very law when I made a short video of 39th Birthday using an excerpt from the LInkin Park song Little things give you away. Good thing the video was cheesy and/or amateurish and I was only using it to build my video editing skills.

What is fair use?

As long as you/one are not trying to overtly monetize off of the work/content someone else made, you/we should all be able to harness the power of technology to repurpose pieces of all art and culture to tell our story, our perspective.

Larry Lessig said, “It is now anybody with access to a $1500 computer who can take sounds and images from the culture around us and use it to say things differently. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech.  It is a literacy for this generation.“

This resonates with me for one reason, and one reason alone. Stand-up comedy. The one art form that breaks all the boundaries and pushes the limit of human potential anytime someone has the presence of mind and/or balls to do so. Stand-up comedians are the unofficial frontline defenders of all things free speech and true creative expression. Don’t believe me. Take a listen to this bit by the great George Carlin and tell me he wouldn’t be bombarded by todays’ cancel culture.