Debating The Hybrid Economy with Stephen

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law Professor, Wired columnist and author of  Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy was on The Colbert Report this past week, trying to explain to Stephen how outdated American copyright laws are, creating a “failed war” on copyright infringement and a big distraction from solving far more serious national issues.The premise of  Remix is that greater value  is created for all when content is shared freely  – allowing others to collaborate with it (remix) and, in turn, create new content to be freely available.  A hybrid economy is then created, combining free, shared content with a revenue-generating distribution structure.

Author Lawrence Lessig tries to convince Stephen:

This blog post is a tiny example of Mr. Lessig’s point.  Content from others (Lawrence Lessig, Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central,  YouTube and Wikipedia) is being used by – me – to create this blog post… thus creating both content value for me and more publicity for them.

Also, based on from Stephen’s reaction to this idea (“no remixing!”), I may get sued soon.