Lack of Creativity, or Loss of Freedom?

Prompt: "What are the most important "harms" that you, personally, see facing the ways intellectual property operating today, and how are those different from or similar to the harms faced by previous generations?"

While Lessig continuously warns of and mourns over the loss of general creativity in our culture, I think that the general loss of creativity is only part of the problem. Honestly, I see this domineering over the people by the major corporations and the government as a forerunner of the type of world we see in Fahrenheit 451, the Hunger Games series, and even the reality of the Soviet Union. We are not so much suffering a lack of creativity (there is plenty of that out there, just underground), we are suffering a lack of control over our own lives, a lack of freedom. In the end, the only way that freedom is bought back is with the sacrifice of innocent blood. It will be America's second war for Independence.

In previous generations while the major corporations often had unfair control over a market, as evidenced in the Armstrong vs. RCA battle, the key feature that allowed the individual to succeed was the fact that the government and the corporations couldn't monitor the individual's actions 100% of the time. Now, with modern technology, “big brother” can, and likely does, always watch. Your everyday action on a networked device can be monitored, and the possible consequences of such a world have perhaps been foreshadowed by the “Bourne” movies.

 I do not think that our “lack of creativity” is the most important thing to be worried about. I think, rather, that this unfair, unjust over-regulation of our society is merely a symptom of the larger problem at hand. Perhaps the American people will rise up and fight for their rights. Judging by the example of the Occupy Wall Street “protests” (where the protesters sat around on their hands and did nothing), I rather doubt it. Even if everyone stopped using existing content owned by the major corporations, I am sure those corporations would stop at nothing to manipulate us to ensure their own survival.