1. Do I think copying is always theft or not?
The short answer is no, or at least most of the time I don’t think it is. When a person makes a copy of someone else’s work, whether it be the latest big movie or a scientific paper on butterfly migrations patterns, as long as that work has been copyrighted, then the person who has made that copy has broken the law. A court of law would probably rule that this person had actually made an attempt at thievery. But copying isn’t really theft, and here’s why I think that is.
- Unlike a house burglar or shop thief, who is taking something away from someone else and leaving them without it, a person who makes a copy of someone else’s work hasn’t actually taken anything away from anyone.
- If I was to download the latest episode of a popular tv show, even if I paid for that download, and let my friend watch it, no one has lost that episode from their possession, however it would still be considered illegal. You might say that now though, the producers of that tv show have lost a little money from me downloading it and sharing it with my friend, since now at least he/she won’t pay to watch it. However, I would say that now that they’ve been exposed to it, if they like it then they’ll be more likely to go out and buy a set of episodes on dvd, or go on the internet and pay to download it, especially if it is fairly cheap.
Probably my biggest reason for why I don’t think copying is theft though is because all media, regardless of who initially thought of it and created it, is information, and I don’t believe anyone can really ‘own’ information. The plot to a movie, the colours used in the backdrop in each scene and what costumes the actors were wearing in it are all things that could be compiled in a simple text document, or compiled in a speech, or simply thought about by any person, whether they’d heard about the movie or not (however unlikely that would be). In fact, you could really do this for any movie, song, poem, photo, picture or any other form of media. Essentially, a piece of media is a compilation of many different little bits of information.
That being said, as any of those little bits of information could be thought, written, typed or spoken by anyone, in any order and to any extent, I don’t believe that copying is theft. All the details surrounding and explaining the movie Citizen Kane, for example, have always existed, for all the billions of years the universe has existed, but it wasn’t until around about 70-80 years ago that someone ended up having the thoughts required to come up with the plot for it, how many actors to use, etc. It’s not that the writers of Citizen Kane wrote it per se, but had the thoughts required to produce the movie in a style that it finally ended up as.
Saying that copying is theft is like saying that since you own your name, anyone who wants to say it or write it down must pay you, even though it is information that existed before you, and before everyone else for that matter.
Source: http://mimiandeunice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ME_402_CensorshipVsCopyright1.png
2. Who is Larry Lessig and what part has he played in the copyright/copyleft debate?
Larry Lessig was the man who founded Creative Commons in 2001, which is a non-profit organisation that allows people to license their work without using copyright to license it. He has helped to make different kinds of creative commons licenses that people can use to license their work, so that they can have more flexibility over what they want to allow the public to be able to do with their work. For example, using a creative commons license, you can allow people to be able to make profit on your work or not, allow people to change it or or only allow them to be able to upload it in the same form, etc.
Larry Lessig has also been a critic of Copyright, notably copyright term extensions. However, he has also stated that he can see the reason in copyright being legally enforced, but believes that the rights allowed to a content creator should be more limited, as well as the copyright term.
He is also a proponent for Copyleft, which is the idea that Creative Commons is based around.
Bibliography:
http://mimiandeunice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ME_402_CensorshipVsCopyright1.png
frodo2016 
Heeelloo
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Could you please put the creative commons licence in either the footer or sidebar of your blog – as it stands it only applies to the one post. Thanks
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