Since the topic of remix culture was brought up to me, I seem to see it everywhere. The more I think about it, I can see the extent to which this aspect of culture has grown and evolved in our recent history. Lessing says that, “they (or at least the “young people of the day”) add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them” (Lessing, 2008).

As I have previously pointed out, the copyright laws are the only aspect of this culture that havent evolved at all. In recent conversation with my roommate on the topic, she brought to my attention the extent of the punishment for ‘piracy.’ After dedicating a little bit of time to google on this topic, I came across this article. The author discusses the topic using satire, but it does bring up some serious points. According to the article, to date, the largest sum of money that has been handed out as punishment for ‘piracy’ is $2 million US dollars, for the 24 songs she was found guilty of downloading from Kazaa. The money is to go to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to makeup for the damages caused by her actions.

It seems to me that there were zero or at leas extremely minimal damages to the recording industry, so I have to agree with the defendants analysis that these fines are "excessive shocking and monstrous.” The decision to uphold this heavy fine was later supported by the federal government as they felt it was necessary because “actual damages are hard to quantify, the government wrote, “furthermore, in establishing that range, Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe that they till go unnoticed.”

I must go back to Lawrence Lessing for a concluding thought, he states that, “the twentieth century was the first time in the history of human culture when popular culture had become professionalized, and when the people were taught to defer to the professional’ (Lessing, 2008). In response to that I ask, isn’t it time that the laws reflect contemporary culture, and stop trying to destroy it?