Blog Post 2 (DTC 356)

The idea of a communist brings fear into the hearts of people who feel like there is a threat. It started back during the end of World War 2 and became the defining "enemy" to the United Nations during the Cold War. Communism strives to have common ownership of the things that the country creates. The food is shared evenly, the money is shared evenly, and then intellectual property is shared evenly. People are not allowed to be treated in a strict social hierarchy.

Lessig discusses intellectual property as a necessity to produce new ideas based off what we already know. Thus putting heavy copyright laws on intellectual ideas can be damaging. While on the other-hand Bill Gates proclaims that more copyright is necessary to protect ideas from "intellectual communists".

Although I understand what Bill Gates means, I believe that communist and communism are words that have been grossly used for modern day topics. As a country we tend to start associating war and fear with words that were ideas on good intentions.

An "Intellectual Communist" is not what Lessig desires of our entire world to become. He approves of ownership as well as creative commons with anything that is made. What he really disproves of, are the laws and hurdles that a person must go through in order to be creative. If one person is even remotely entitled to saying "no, you can't use that" then there is a fear of being crushed under lawyers and fines.

I believe that Bill Gates did not intend to call Lessig a communist. I do believe however that there are plenty of people who are not willing to give credit where credit is due. Not being able to protect your work can be frustrating, especially if people are getting money off a product or idea that you haven't received a dime for. It is a fine line to walk. People should be able to create and be inspired by source material, but it can't be taken strictly as their own work if it truly isn't (for example; fan art, spin-off, cross-overs, OR stealing in general like plagiarism, ext).