Lethem Assignment

Jonathan Lethem quotes Robert Boynton’s article, “The Tyranny of Copyright?”, in the “Usemonopoly” (217) section (“... everything from attempts…” to “... defendants as young as twelve”) to describe how oppressive copyright laws can be. The quoted article describes the specific example of Swarthmore College Students who sought to expose the flaws in election machines created by Diebold Elections Systems. In this example, Swarthmore originally took down all the leaked files that the students uploaded, but enough bad publicity for Diebold stopped them from further pursuing a lawsuit. This situation revealed how copyright laws essentially allow corporations to take anything down from the internet since service providers and internet users alike are unwilling to enter legal battles with such corporations. While Lethem and Boynton use the shared examples similarly, Lethem points out the flaws in a copyright culture while Boynton points out flaws with the copyright laws specifically. Furthermore, Boynton reveals how copyright laws are problems for consumers who wish to share pertinent information. Lethem differs because he analyzes how the copyright culture hurts the artists and content creators specifically. Lethem’s interpretation of copyright culture is a more relevant interpretation today because it addresses a type of culture which has persisted. Should that culture be abolished, Lethem’s analysis is still relevant because it is meant to say how art is reliant on copyright. On the other hand, by analyzing specific laws and copyright regulation, Boynton’s article written in 2004 is not as relevant today because it does not account for the changing legal environment. For the most part, Boynton and Lethem agree and use the quoted passage in similar ways.