Response to Lawrence Lessig - Ch1: Creators 10/19/2010

I found this article extremely interesting, first off for a company such as Disney (who is at the forefront of ensuring that their product is not copyrighted) to have gone and developed that company based on a series of copied forms of media ("Steamboat Bill Jr." not to mention almost the entirety of the Brother's Grimm stories) is highly hypocritical. I find that his blatantly contradicts immense emphasis that they put on their copyright laws. Secondly the concept of the doujinshi "copying" or "modifying" other artist's work and then selling it for a product is also interesting. I think that the doujinshi comics have just become embedded into the culture so much so that their form of marketing is accepted. As was stated in the article...30% of the revenue from publishings in Japan account for manga comics alone let alone combined with the dujinshi. A) with the amount of money coming in from these sales I would be surprised fi the Janpanese government started a crack down on the doujinshi. It would devastate the publication economy and then the economy in general B) Even if the government did start taking these doujinshi artists to court, there just aren't enough lawyers to support these cases. I believe that not blatantly stealing ideas but the progression and building upon ideas is a wonderful notion because that's ow society progresses and moves forward. Especially in the fields of science and art. As for the questions proposed in the back of the article about a culture being free and if it is so...to whom is that freedom granted, (I am not sure how this works in other cultures or societies) however, in Western society the quote unquote "freedom" is more likely granted, scarcastically stated in the article, to the Royal Family and to the top ten corporations in the New York stalk exchange.