Mooney 1

Patrick Mooney

Dr. Dietel-McLaughlin

FYC13100

29 September 2010

Balance is Key

In this digital age, a new type of musician has emerged, and they are notorious for the

songs they make and the controversy they bring. The songs they produce are called mash-ups,

and they are created by combining songs from popular, original artists or authors to make their

own song. For instance, the popular musical group Danger Mouse recorded and published The

Grey Album, which combined Jay-Z’s lyrics with The Beatle’s instrumentation. Obviously,

musical and recording studios do not appreciate this new form of art because these mash-up

artists are profiting by creating songs using songs owned by the recording studios, which is

against copyright law.

Andrew Keen, in his article “Web 2.0,”which The Weekly Standard published, addresses

this issue by deploring the tendency to praise the mash-up culture or Web 2.0 culture because of

how it drowns out elite talent within a massive pool of average contenders. Since Web 2.0

focuses on the realization of one’s own self and not on what others accomplish, Web 2.0 does

not focus on elite talent. For instance, Google currently personalizes its advertisements for

products the user already uses based on the sites we click on in its search bar instead of goods

and services we don’t normally pay attention to. Also, digital piracy is destroying the music

industry and is discouraging the production of albums and songs by elite and popular artists, such
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as U2 or Guster. Because of this, Web 2.0 seems to be undermining the incentive for talented

people to keep on being talented.

However, Lawrence Lessig’s article “In Defense of Piracy,” published by The Wall

Street Journal, analyzes the downfall of copyright law in a digital world, pointing out how it

limits creativity and free speech to many people. For instance, when Universal Studios noticed

that a song by Prince was playing in the background of a YouTube video of a toddler dancing to

the music, they demanded that YouTube remove the video because of copyright infringement.

To Lessig and Lenz, the owner of the video, this claim seems to be outrageous because it forbade

her from posting her video to her family for a couple of months. This denial of free speech can

also be seen in lawyers suing the band Girl Talk, which creates mash-ups of multiple songs to

create new songs for their albums. While Lessig provides convincing evidence to support his

argument in favor of mash-up artists and creativity in a digital culture over copyright laws,

Keen’s superior appeal to ethos makes his argument against the Web 2.0 culture more credible

and more convincing to his main audience.

In the article “In Defense of Piracy,” Lessig appropriately displays classical rhetorical

principles through his excellent display of pathos and logos; however, he shows a lack of the use

of ethos in his article. He appeals to his audience quite adeptly by using pathos. For example, he

uses the example of the Universal Studios suing Stephanie Lenz for having a YouTube video of

her toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” describing the posting of the YouTube video

as if “it was a perfect YouTube moment: a community of laughs around a homemade video,

readily shared with anyone who wanted to watch” (Lessig). This example appeals to the

audience’s emotion because it makes the audience sympathize with Lenz. Lenz was not
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intentionally trying to break any copyright laws while making her homemade video. She was

simply attempting to show her relatives how cute her toddler was, which is relatable to the

audience, and therefore, the audience is able to sympathize with Lenz’s plight and be more

compelled to Lessig’s argument. Also, Lessig uses a toddler in his opening example of Lenz’s

YouTube plight, which adds an extra element of sympathy for the audience because people are

more likely to be emotional and care about a toddler’s dilemma rather than a grown adult’s

dilemma.

Also, Lessig uses logos excellently as well in his article “In Defense of Piracy.” For

example, Lessig states that when people think of the ‘copyright wars,’ their minds “would not

likely run to artists like Girl Talk or creators like Stephanie Lenz” but rather to “kids stealing

stuff with a computer” (Lessig). This logically lets the audience realize that they support

copyright laws because of teenagers stealing music using Peer to Peer file sharing programs such

as BitTorrent, LimeWire, or Kazaa and that the mash-up artists are unjustifiably being denied

their rights to be creative and make their own music. Because of that, Lessig logically compels

the audience to support his argument in favor of changing copyright laws to let mash-up artists

like Danger Mouse and Girl Talk to be creative and thrive in this digital culture.

However, although Lessig is able to make excellent use of the pathos and logos rhetorical

devices, his article seems to have a lack of the use of the ethos rhetorical device. The only

credibility he seems to show the readers is in the beginning of the article, which states that he is a

Stanford law professor. Nowhere else in the article does he give an explicit use of the rhetorical

device of ethos.
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Keen, however, explicitly uses the rhetorical device of ethos throughout his article “Web

2.0.” For example, Keen connects the classical story of Odysseus and his men being able to

ignore the seducing song of the Sirens with the contemporary population’s ability to be easily

seduced, stating that “moderns are less nimble at resisting great seductions, particularly those

utopian visions that promise grand political or cultural salvation” (Keen). Being able to connect

the classics with modern-day events, such as the new Web 2.0 culture, shows the audience that

he is an educated writer, adding his own personal credibility to his argument that people should

be wary of this new digital culture that supports amateurism. Also, the end of Keen’s article

points out how “Keen is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur,” which can also be shown

through his personal experiences he shares during the dot-com boom (Keen). This shows the

audience that Keen has been in the field of computers and the Internet for many years and that

his personal credibility in this field should be taken seriously.

Unlike Lessig, who only displays commendable use of the rhetorical devices of logos and

pathos but not ethos, Keen displays excellent use of ethos, pathos, and logos. For instance, Keen

realizes that since he writes for The Weekly Standard, his audience will mainly be politically

conservative people. Because of that, he convincingly connects the Web 2.0 culture’s

democratization of the web to communism and Marxism, stating that “as Marx seduced a

generation of European idealists with his fantasy of self-realization in a communist utopia, so the

Web 2.0 cult of creative self-realization has seduced everyone in Silicon Valley” (Keen). Since

politically conservative people tend to deplore anything related to communism because

communism opposes the laissez-faire capitalism that conservatives support and because the Cold

War was fought against the communist Soviet Union, politically conservative people tend to
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become angry at anything related to communism. Since Keen has effectively connected

communism with the Web 2.0 culture, Keen has effectively used pathos and compelled his

audience to support him because their anger at communism will be directed toward the Web 2.0

culture as well. Keen also connects the Web 2.0 culture with the hippie culture of the 1960’s by

sharing similar phrases they have in common, which include the phrases of “Empowering citizen

media, radically democratize, smash elitism, content redistribution, and authentic community”

(Keen). Since conservatives today look down upon the hippie counterculture of the sixties

because of its liberal and anti-capitalistic nature, they become angry at anything associated with

hippies. Again, Keen shows excellent skill at utilizing pathos to stir emotion in his audience to

support his argument.

Keen also utilizes the rhetorical device of logos to some extent as well. For example,

Keen points out in his article that digital technologies, such as TiVo and the iPod, are usurping

traditional businesses and media, such as newspapers, television networks, and the music

industry. Keen points out that the purpose of traditional media “is to discover, nurture, and

reward elite talent” and that the Web 2.0 culture only throws away such reward for elite talent by

drowning it with amateur talent. This logically compels Keen’s conservative audience to support

Keen’s claims against the Web 2.0 culture because conservatives tend to support the idea that

people with elite talent should be rewarded for their talent more so than a person who doesn’t put

in as much effort and only has mediocre talent.

Although Keen’s article seems to be a clearly stronger rhetorical article than Lessig’s

article, some may argue that Keen is too aggressive in his use of rhetorical devices. For instance,
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Keen states that the new Web 2.0 culture is “eerily similar to Marx’s seductive promise about

self-realization” and that the new digital culture is destroying every traditional business (Keen).

To some people, Keen may seem to be exaggerating in his claims that the digital culture is a

destructive, communist force wanting to destroy capitalist society. Because of that, Keen’s

article does not persuade those people well.

However, despite that, Keen should be used in the next edition of They Say I Say because

Keen is not writing his article towards those people. Instead, Keen is writing to people who read

The Weekly Standard, who are traditional conservatives. Traditional conservatives tend to look

down upon anything related to communism. Since Keen is able to effectively relate the digital

culture to communism, Keen persuades his audience to deplore the new digital culture.

Unlike Lessig, Keen is able to effectively and explicitly utilize all three of the main forms

of rhetoric, which are ethos, logos, and pathos. Since Lessig only explicitly uses two of the forms

of rhetoric, logos and pathos, Keen’s article “Web 2.0” should be published in the next edition of

They Say I Say as an example of persuasive use of rhetoric.

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Works Cited

Keen, Andrew. “Web 2.0.” The Weekly Standard. 15 Feb 2006: n. pag. Web. 29 Aug 2010.

Lessig, Larry. “In Defense of Piracy.” The Wall Street Journal. 16 Oct 2008: n. pag. Web. 1 Sept

2010.