Comparing Apples and Storage Space

I wouldn't steal twenty apples from a grocery store to eat. For one the apples are going to get bad before I even got to eat all of them and so there would be a wasted effort and there would be wasted apples. No one wins. I may, if I feel so compelled some day, steal twenty apples from Wal-Mart and make an apple-slice-replica of the building from which I stole the fruit from. This is a fruit remix or medley if you like double meanings like I do.

The difference in music remixing as a cultural movement is that there is far less criminality to what Girl Talk is doing compared to what I'm doing (my action would be far more political and less enjoyable in total). Music is a commodity to those who sell it. Music is also, to everyone else, an experience, a passion, a medium for expression of emotions, beliefs, and any other thought that needs to be pushed out in some form. There is life in the construction of something from something else. A different life. The blatant theft and useless squandering of a commodity in this case musical tracks or apples (both for consumption) is much more wrong than re-creation.

What Lawrence Lessig is saying is that there is a need for copyright laws, but there is no need to lock up everybody who takes something that doesn't belong to them. There can be great value coming from this renewable resource's theft. Sometimes that theft leads to something even more valuable than a granny smith version of your local neighborhood evil-mart, maybe even more valuable than the evil-mart it represents.