Summary Of Some Like It Hot

Piracy is, and always has been, a large concern for producers in the music and film industries. In his essay “Some Like it Hot,” 2016 Presidential Candidate Lawrence Lessig defends the principle of piracy on the claim that it founded the basis for “the birth of Hollywood, radio, cable TV, and (yes) the music industry.” Lessig elaborates on each industry in turn, clearly describing the varying copyright laws for the different industries in their perspective time periods, and demonstrates the means pirates used to evade these copyright laws, discussing the parallels and variances between them. His purpose in doing so is to clarify to readers that “even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all piracy is.” This statement brings us to his focal

Starting with the foundation of Hollywood, he describes how film makers moved to California to escape the reach of copyright laws that protected the inventions of Thomas Edison that made film production possible. In this case, the binary is between Edison, backed by federal law, and filmmakers such as Fox and Paramount, who pirated his inventions in order to pioneer the film industry. Lessig draws a pattern between these past discrepancies and P2P sharing, claiming that both occur in an attempt to “escape an overly controlling industry.” In the case of P2P sharing, the binary is between the music industry and the general public. By using binaries, Lessig strengthens his argument by making it appear simpler than it truly is. When an issue is painted in black and white, readers are more inclined to agree with the points being presented. This tactic is often used by politicians, a generic “us” versus “them” comparison that effectively rallies people towards a cause they may not fully

However, in “Some Like It Hot,” Lessig uses them to his advantage while also including several additional patterns and analogies that provide supplemental evidence to readers, enabling them to be more informed about the subject matter he discusses. While this further complicates his argument by creating additional information for readers to process, it strengthens his thesis by more fully educating readers. While the case of Hollywood’s piratic foundation was rather unique in terms of the way it was handled legally, Lessig describes the anomaly in full before continuing on to discuss the radio and television industries, between which there are many parallels he demonstrates for us. After describing the forms of piracy used to create each respective industry, he discusses how Congress dealt with each issue. Regarding the problem of radios in 1909, favoring the composer, artist, and recording artist over pirates, it was decided that composers would receive a fixed fee predetermined by Congress for any “mechanical reproductions” of a composer’s work. This makes cover songs possible without entirely compromising the rights of the composer, artist, and producer of the original song. Lessig delineates the pattern between this ruling and the decision Congress made decades later regarding television; like with radio stations, cable networks would be required to pay a fixed