Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

Lessig, as usual, makes reasoned, well-thought out criticisms and suggestions for reform of the current copyright statutes in the United States. he is supportive of copyright, creators, and consumers. Unfortunately as long as the Citizens United decision stands, there is no hope of any of these suggestions or criticisms receiving any sort of a fair hearing on Capitol Hill.

More sensible words from Lessig, who is not happy with the idea that most of our children these days have been made criminals by our current approach to intellectual property - read only, one way, maximized for profit.

Lessig’s a good writer, and he likes remix and doesn’t like making our kids into criminals. Thus he supports (1) taking amateur (noncommercial) remix out of the coverage of copyright entirely and (2) creating some sort of digital levy allowing filesharing that’s going to happen anyway. The book goes down easily, but unless it’s your first serious exposure to the culture and economy of remix there’s very little new in it. You can download the pdf from the publisher.

This is a fascinating discussion about the current copyright situation and possible evolution.
The first part of the book seems to have been written a couple of years ago and includes a set of examples that may not be obsolete, but have been seen over and over (e.g., in books such as Wikinomics).
The second part is more technical and interesting.

Valuable addition to the discussion of the point where creation and busines intersect

This book is available for free (CC NC-BY) at Scribd http://www.scribd.com/doc/47089238/Remix