Who Owns Culture?

May 5, 2006, 3:36 pm

Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and cyberspace theorist, is well-known for challenging traditional notions of copyright. A 20-minute video of a recent speech given by Mr. Lessig is making the rounds on some popular blogs. The speech, “Who Owns Culture?,” provides a brief look at how new technologies, starting with the player piano, have challenged traditional models of how copyrighted materials are distributed and how artists are paid. Mr. Lessig says that we’re now in a “remix culture” where people find creative ways to meld existing creative works to make something completely new. He argues that copyright laws need to be reformed to allow such digital creativity to thrive.

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11 Responses to Who Owns Culture?

Vance Maverick - January 31, 2012 at 1:15 am

rarely of bards or poets

Do you mean this seriously? That is, do you genuinely believe bards and poets were rare in Latin — or is that just a throwaway line? Not that I’m sure which would be worse.

gavin_moodie - January 31, 2012 at 8:11 am

I agree with Vance. But out of excessive caution or perhaps being rather less generous than Vance I offer Lucretius, Virgil, Horace and Ovid as poets and Livius Andronicus, Terence and Seneca as playwrights.

Lucy Ferriss - January 31, 2012 at 9:03 am

You are both correct. I was speaking primarily of the way in which Latin is generally viewed–we read Cicero first, and Seneca’s tragedies don’t get the attention of, say, Sophocles’s plays–but I should have worded the phrase more carefully. In fact, the Romans produced many great poets and playwrights.

sjhuskey - January 31, 2012 at 11:01 am

Before we say requiescat in pace to botanical Latin, let me announce a nascent effort to keep it alive and well. I am in talks with researchers and librarians at the Missouri Botanical Gardens to turn the work of diagnosing new species in Latin over to Latinists like me. More to come soon.

mstripling - January 31, 2012 at 11:04 am

Regretfully, “cross-training” the mind comes to an end in botanical nomenclature. Ave Atque Vale, Magistra Stripling

carrieprz - January 31, 2012 at 2:24 pm

This presumes that English will remain widely written, read, and spoken for millennia. I will not live to find out if this is true, but I suspect it won’t be. Like Latin and of a variety of other languages, for example the various languages of the people who occupied North and South America before the arrival of Europeans, it will likely become subsumed into the language of the the next culture that claims dominance, although traces of it will linger in subtle ways.

jiminnc - January 31, 2012 at 6:15 pm

“I should have worded the phrase more carefully.” Because it was completely 100% wrong? Did you learn Latin 150 years ago? Catullus, Vergil, Ovid and Horace make up a huge portion of the first several years of Latin, and you have to work hard to squeeze some prose in. And even if they weren’t still studied, it would still be a historical fact that “Latin… ***was*** [your word] …the language of bards and poets.” Latin is no longer the language of empire, because the emperors are all dead. It is still the language of poets, who are alive today.

This is a terrible terrible piece of writing.

Miguel Calvo - February 1, 2012 at 12:41 am

Congratulations!!!

Miguel Calvo

raymond_j_ritchie - February 1, 2012 at 10:46 am

This was coming for a very long time. I was at the International Botanical Congress meeting in Sydney in 1980 when it was discussed. The problem was not only the lack of people with Latin skills but finding anyone with Latin skills that knew any biology. There was some thought of following the Zoological Code and accepting English or French but many argued that was archaic as for many a descrption in French would be no more accessible than a Latin description. Some suggested any official UN language (English, French, Spanish, Russian or Mandarin) but that got nowhere because in some countries some of the UN-official languages are almost inaccessible. Today it is impossible to function as a biologist without being able to at least read English and so finding someone who has English and some biology is not too difficult.
Some comfort for Anglophobes. Modern scientific English is not really like any current form of spoken English. It is becoming more like a classical language simply because you have to write your papers in the knowledge that about 90% of your readership are not native speakers of English. Hence, the short sentences and very simple sentence structure.
There are also problems with the Botanical Code vs. the Microbiology Code. Many cyanobacteria, fungi and algae are described using either code depending on the training of the describer and some are described by both codes. Which description has priority? The definition of what is a species is different under the two codes and that leads to problems. Under the botanical code it does not matter if the species is no longer available in culture or is extinct. Under the Microbiological Code the species refers to a particular culture. If it dies or is lost the species effectively no longer exists unless somebody reisolates it and is able to show that it is identical to the ‘lost species’. The new culture becomes the ‘type’.

fledermaus - February 2, 2012 at 6:10 am

Am I the only one who finds it ironic talking about Latin being a dead language when the name of the blog is LINGUA FRANCA?

awegweiser - February 3, 2012 at 11:29 am

A good thing so very few people know Latin or the radio stations that play Carmina Burana
will be severely chastised by our ever vigilant morality FCC.