Summary of overbearing copyright laws and restrictions: What must we consider?

Overbearing copyright laws and restrictions have detrimentally affected the cultural commons provided by new media and the public domain of the Internet. Part of the reasoning behind such copyright laws and restrictions is to protect the origin of creations found within this new media cultural commons and grant credit where credit is due. Despite the light-hearted appearance of such reasoning, organizations and corporations are actually gaining profit and have become too concerned with gaining such profit, stripping online users of their right to re-create, re-design and re-distribute the content that is found within the new media online. As Jenkins (2004) suggests, corporations have allowed the production, distribution and possession of such works to become substantially more meaningful than the social questions of place, value and relative “worth” of content and works found within the cultural commons that can potentially be produced online. As kpreet92 notes, copyright laws hinder the process of creating and re-designing content and media as they withhold the recycling of media that re-creating requires. If users are granted equal access to content and can show corporations the significance of creating a cultural commons that is equally attainable to all, perhaps dictatorial copyright laws can be replaced with the democratized use of new media to create a cultural commons online.  Lessig (2001) deems a ‘cultural commons’ to include any kind of public domain, and as kh2f00 suggested, the Internet is a public domain in which users should not have to follow specific rules in order to access a cultural commons. The monetary value that corporations place on new media content, mentioned by LEras, can potentially and partially be replaced if corporations and organizations can see the cultural worth in producing content that is available to all, encouraging a positive and connected online community. If corporations and organizations should truly ease up on copyright laws and restrictions, producers must be mindful of the origin of cultural content and media that they do happen to re-create, re-design and re-distribute, as suggested by kh2f00.