What I can do

CONTENT: PAST>PRESENT>FUTURE

Just got done listening to the Lessig and was pretty impressed at the way he feels about the struggle between owning and sharing cultural material. I say "material" meaning everything that is produced in both a open source or proprietary manner, but is then instilled in some facet of culture as a physical OR conceptual entity. Some examples would be an iPod as a physical object or and iPod as a cultural landmark.

My own work. I use personal (extremely so, though it is "lessened" by the fact that it's uploaded to an online community) photograph owned solely by the personal who photographed the image. This is how I make my living recycling images that (unless greenlighted by the owner through Flickr's creative commons partnership) I cannot sell. Material I CREATE cannot then be reintroduced back into the places it was taken from because I did not create the original. I have considered this, and will most likely keep producing until I need to address that issue (I must at least consider it).

All content produced will the end goal of being sustained is self aggrandized content. EX: A work (PRESENT) is more important than the work that it borrows from (PAST) i.e. the reason for its creation; A work (PRESENT) must aim to be recognized by prospective additions (FUTURE). But here's a question: after the first generation of change to the original work, how do we define the importance of various successions on what we know the current version to be?
How do we define presidents? What are the greatest successes in the civil rights movements?

WHAT CREDITS ARE NECESSARY TO FURTHER OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE POINT WE ARE AT NOW WITH THE CONTENT WE PRODUCE WITHIN OUR SOCIETY?
Is it crucial to consider the length of time Michael Jackson has owned a certain Beatles song or who he sold it to and when?... sure, if your interests lie in royalties. The current system of how we frame items in our culture (again "items" being both tangible and non-tangible concepts, though a physical object is easier to identify) is through a capitalist market. That is to say the reason we have 100+ year copyrights is because it places them in a vague position of HOW they can be used in the future, but assures one thing: WHO created them.