Lethem Reading

“The idea that culture can be property-intellectual property-is used to justify everything from attempts to force the Girls Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate for Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone. Corporations like Celera Genomics have filed for patents for human genes, while the Recording Industry Association of America has sued music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court-settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as twelve.” (Lethem 217)

This passage appears in the Usemonopoly section of Lethem’s essay. However, it was originally written by Robert Boyton for one of his publications in the New York Times Magazine called “The Tyranny of Copyright?”. In the article, this passage is preceded by a specific example of how copyright laws silenced freedom of speech. Boyton then follows up with this passage in order to paint a picture of how copyright laws have invaded numerous aspects of everyday life in a negative manner. He also uses it as a bridge to introduce the idea of protesting limits on speech and creativity. However, the most profound takeaway of the passage is that it shows how contradictory the concept of intellectual property is to purpose to the age of Internet, the very thing that sparked made information available to the masses. Intellectual property allows for creators to hold on to their ideas and prevent the general public from benefiting from them to the fullest extent. Whereas, the information age we live in today allows for this free flow of ideas and creativity. On a large scale, the entire article seems to be parallel to Lethem’s broader argument about the modern obsession of avoiding copying others. Lethem utilizes this passage to briefly highlight the main idea of this section: License to use or own something exclusively is granting a monopoly on use or “usemonoply” that limits the possibilities of creativity for others. This ties into the larger idea of the essay whole. Lethem believes that when creating art, drawing inspiration from previous works is not only unavoidable, but also allows for art to evolve into something great.