The Suppression of Creativity: A Response

When I first glanced at the video of Larry Lessig I immediately thought that I would be bored. Pretty much anytime a professor gives me a video to watch it consists of some professional lecturing about a subject using terms I don't understand. I wasn't really expecting much different of this one. But I am happy to say that I was wrong, and made that judgement a bit to quickly. Not only does Lessig bring up great points about the relationship between creativity and today's technology, but he does it in such a way that is easy to understand and humorous.
The main point behind the presentation was to discuss how today's laws regarding copyright are inhibiting creativity among people, mainly today's youth. He brings up the point that today, instead of encouraging kids to use amazing sites like Flickr, Youtube and other creative outlets, we're taking the things they do create and using our laws to turn them into internet pirates. If a 10 second clip of a cartoon is used or a 30 second snippet of a song is played as background to a video, the law is jumping on these people and calling them thieves for using a piece of media protected by a copyright.
I am an avid Youtube watcher. I enjoy perusing videos in my spare time (and when I should be doing schoolwork) and I know many people my own age who use the site to upload their own videos. Personally, I think the entire idea of Youtube is amazing. The fact that you can take your webcam or camera and use it to create whatever you want and share it with the rest of the world in just a simple click is astounding. But there have been many times when I've watched a video that someone my age has put up, bookmarked it and gone back to watch it again later, only to find it was taken down due to copyright infringement.
I understand that the artists who create these pieces of media want to protect their work and they have a right to that, but at the same time I find it very hard to believe that a 14 year old kid using a song in a homemade video is really out to rid that band of their earnings. In order to create anything anymore you have to jump through countless hoops and hurtles to make sure you're not breaking the law. I think Larry Lessig made a great point when he stated that we're taking today's youth, who just want to use this amazing technology to create something of their own, and turning them into pirates.
Now, more than ever, we have so many tools and outlets at our fingertips that we can use to create whatever we want. This freedom of creativity should be encouraged, not stifled. We should be telling kids to use the cameras, microphones and computers available in almost every home in this country and get to work creating whatever they want. We shouldn't be telling them to let it go to waste in fear of breaking the law.

Larry Lessig