Lawrence Lessig made good points that I agree with. One of them being how copyright laws don’t help advance education but hold it back instead even if its a person that’s autodidactic. The second statement is when he pointed out his generation watched TV but the newer generation makes TV, the reason i liked this statement is because I feel like in a way he’s saying that thanks to technology the newer generations have have the advantage to make a change to the way the copyright law works. The change being that we can freely use copyrighted material for creative purposes only and not have to be afraid of facing criminal charges.
After reading and watching all the videos my take on copyright and the fair use act is that the copyright law extended from being a law that protects ideas and creative works to a law that helps companies protect their money, I feel that such things should be copyrighted but should also allow free use of their ideas and creative works but only for creative and educational use and the copyright law should only step in when the creative use is starting to turn in a commercial product that provides income but if not let it be allowed to be altered and played with and see how these ideas and creative works spark more ideas and creative works. This free use of copyrighted material for creative use should be added as an extension fair use act and become a solid law.
I also agree with the point you made about technology being a force for change in the way copyright right law works Wil. Unlike in earlier years where the tools for producing unique creations were limited to the wealthy or popular commercial companies, now the average person can create new works using a computer software or even a smartphone app. But another important aspect of technology’s empowerment also lies in the emergence of hackers or pirates. I believe that the people known as “pirates” resort to practices such as illegally sharing intellectual property because of these same strict copyright laws that like you said, seem to always be about profit.