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Ask Lawrence Lessig About Life And Law Online
Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School, and before that of various other places, is one of the best-known voices in the world of electronic freedoms. Lessig's new book, The Future of Ideas, is the latest work of many in his efforts to illuminate and create a freer world online. Lessig has agreed to answer your questions; please be courteous by limiting your questions to one per post.
You have one? Where do you find the time?
Best Slashdot Co
Is there really some kind of way to expect that the net will forever remain free as we know it?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
What is your opinion on things like Microsoft's .NET or the Liberty Alliance (I believe that's what it's called - the one being developed by AOL and other companies to counter .NET)? Do you see these as a potential problem in terms of a free online world?
There is no escape from The Muffin.
What, in your opinion, are the chances of getting the DMCA declared unconstitutional?
Given the recent court defeats in both the Felten and 2600 cases, do we even have a chance?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Should he be fired, impeached, or both? And am I aiding and abetting terrorists by asking such a question?
sulli
RTFJ.
We seem to be living in "Interesting Times". The events of 911 have given law-makers the impetus to have acts passed which would have been at the very least debated for a lot longer pre 911. Up until now the Internet has been an incredibly open network with minimalist intervention and legislation from individual countries governments (a few notable exceptions). It seems as if we are going to enter a new legal phase for the internet where legislators in many countries will try to enact and apply laws to take control of this wild beast. Each countries individual efforts will hamper their own citizens without overly effecting the rest of the net.
My question is how much of the above do you disagree with and why? And what body (UN, w3.org, wipo, coporation of ISPs, Microsoft) do you forsee holding the international legal legislatory responsibility for the net at large in 1/5/10/25/50 years time?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Big name companies (with lotsa money to throw at lawyers) are hovering over the net (AOLTW, MS), and Microsoft is getting off so lightly with their monopoly suit. Will the internet become dominated by big companies with no real way to freely get in, or will the law allow the net to stay free and kick out the big companies? To load the comment, I think that its only a matter of time before the big companies close in on the internet. How long and how do you anticipate the law will keep the wolves at bay??
:-P
(1 question per comment, I know, but everyone else does it)
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It seems like a lot of judges who face abstract technology questions -- code as speech, DMCA, etc. -- just don't get it. And can we really blame them? Technology is complicated; can we expect every judge to be an uberhacker?
Perhaps it would be helpful to have some bright programmers set up some concrete examples for judges to consider, which clarify the problems we all see, and help judges refine their intuitions about code and digital information.
For example, to further the "code is protected speech" cause, we could create a full-fledged programming language which reads as plain English, then use it to implement a copy protection circumvention program (DeCSS or the like). This raises all sort of interesting questions: it's English and code; is it protected under the first amendment? Presumably it was before it could be run as a program, so does my inventing a programming language change the status of existing speech? If it's protected as only source code, is an interpreter for that language illegal? Is bundling the English script with the interpreter illegal? And so forth....
...but that's a very thorny example. Are there examples of this kind that we programmers should be producing -- software that makes these theoretical arguments more concrete? Is there anything in this spirit that won't just confuse and/or piss off a judge? What examples do our causes need? We're ready to implement them!
Many years ago, in the early days of the WWW, Laurence Tribe proposed a "Cyberspace Amendment" to the US Constitution that would explicitly extend all the rights and freedoms of the Constitution to all forms of speech, regardless of the medium. The idea was brought to many of us geeks in a Dr. Dobbs article by Michael Swaine. I know what many of my fellow Slashdotters opinions probably are, but I'd like to have yours: how have our Constitutional protections held up on the Internet, in e-mail, and in WWW publishing? Do we still need a Cyberspace amendment - or do we perhaps need it now more than ever?
--Jim
"In my opion, the chances are about the same as slashdot posting a single damn story with out someone asking about DMCA... Espcially in interviews."
idiots thinking that such a low uid is really the creator of the site. Oh didn't think anyone would notice did you?
Do you think that the gradual increases in the length of time that works can remain copyrighted (most recently the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" of the 1990s) will continue every time that the media companies feel that they are about to lose control of some of their "intellectual property"?
Or do you think that the public interest will reassert itself and hold or even turn back some of these copyright extensions?
When a work's copyright is extended, one person (the author or the corporation that owns it) benefits. But when its copyright expires, everyone benefits by being able to copy, modify, expand on and extend it. Can we convince lawmakers with this kind of social and economic argument?
May be a futile question to ask, but we're in probably the intensest period of debate on freedom, law, justice, and crimincal conduct since the American civil war.
Since you are such a big figure in the realm of online freedom, where do you *hope* the level of online freedom is in about 2101, and where do you realistically *think* it will be?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Dr. Lessig,
Looking from the outside in on the legal community's response or lack thereof to the constitutionality and legal basis of recent court rulings (Napster, Eric Corley), the DMCA/SSCA, etc, I see very few lawyers taking a stand against this -- there's mostly a massive shrug. There's the ACLU, the EFF of which you're a part, and Jessica Litman, and that's all I see trying to do something about the co-opting of copyright and patent lawmaking by corporations through appeals based on the interest of business, lobbyists' dealmaking, and outright graft. By and large however there seems to be little interest even amongst lawyers and congressmen about the arcana of copyright and patent law, and thus it's left to such companies and libraries because they're the only ones who both have power and care about it. Has trying to fight this caused conflict in your professional work? Is it lonely being a "vox clamantis in deserto"? What's your game plan for beating these guys back, or do you have one? There's a certain sadness and resignation in both your and Litman's writing that's very disencouraging that would lead me to think that even our flag-bearers feel there's little hope at this point.
--Gregory Dyas
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Rather than ask about current copyright/patent laws, or pending ones, I would like to know what you think the ideal Intellectual Property laws are (assume you could rewrite them as you wish). Also, what sort of international agreements would have to be passed alongside this?
Do you like Japanese imports?
With the increasing ease of distributing copyrighted works, do you think that the "Fair Use" clause of copyright law will have to be modified or eliminated completely?
Back near the turn of the last century, book publishers printed contracts on their books, limiting the ability of the customer to resell or lend his purchases. This practice was halted by the US Supreme court and the consumers right to do what they wish with legitimately purchased copies (with certain limited exceptions) was eventually codified in the US code as part of the '76 Copyright Act.
Given that software is a work of authorship protected by Copyright law, how is it that software publishers get away with these old tricks of printing restrictive contracts on their works, claiming assent simply by using the software, denying people their rights under Copyright law?
burris
Is cyberspace part of some geographical territory, or should it have it's own legislation and jurisdiction (based on global interests), or will it be an anarchy by design?
As a European (Belgian) citizen, I'm wondering why US legislature is trying to take control of a network, that isn't US-only anymore for some time now. Both the DecSS/Sklyarov cases are quite frightening.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
So I sometimes wonder if all the laws these people create are really needed. It seems that many constructions are really of academic nature. These days it seems that the internet will be drowned by overregulation. Why can't we get around with more "common sense" laws instead of trying to create thing which really cover everything ?
It seems to me that the main reason for this is that too many laywers etc. are in the goverments. A mathematican would never ever create such a heap of laws. He would just create some simple, understandable rules from which everything could be easily derived. I very often wonder if there are the wrong people in the goverment. Perhaps should we just use the proposal of Douglas Adams (of course we'll keep the telephone disinfectioners).
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
With South Korean President Kim Dae-jung bringing the Digital Divide back into focus, the gap between the rich technology "haves" and the poor technology "have-nots" seems to get wider all the time.
What can we be doing "officially" to make sure that gap disappears? I know of several organisations that provide computers and technological assistance to the "have-nots", but should the government play a role? And if so, what should that be?
libertarianswag.com
Do you believe that it would be accurate to say that not much money is actually being "lost" to the internet? If so, how would you go about proving this?
The initial request for questions almost paints you as the Champion selected to fight the good fight of online rights. Meaning no disrespect, I appreciate people trying to be heard, but did you always want to champion a cause like this or were you drawn into it from a past incident?
-AlPhAbEt
How likely do you think that the DoJ's proposed settlement with Microsoft will be accepted by the Judge?
If the DoJ's seattlement gets accepted over the 9 renegade state's proposal, what effect do you think the DoJ's seattlement will have?
I think that the future of Free Software ultimately depends on it becoming an economically rewarding activity. Do you agree, and do you have any ideas on how that can/will come about?
a.
What's your take on the case between Ed Felten and RIAA? What we saw there was a poaching on the right to pure academic pursuit to safeguard selfish corporate interests. Do you see the legal infrastructure evolving to give (pardon the pun) the underdogs the upper hand?
What non-techie people, ie: who doesn't write code or is actively involved in computers, can do to help our ideas come true?
From lawyers to musicians, how can we discuss with them and present arguments that will convince them that this is a good war to fight for? Why should they 'buy it'?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
What is your take on the proposed settlements in the antitrust and civil Microsoft cases? To most Slashdotters, the former seems like a slap on the wrist, the latter like a a punishment turned into a reward (increasing dominance of the U.S. education market). Is there something we're missing?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
If you think it should not be legal, what remedies should the law consider, since these systems can have significant non-infringing uses as well?
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
How can we leverage the knowledge of the community to help educate politicians and the general population in terms of technologies, and the impact of the proposed bills? Briefly, how can we help better, not just sending letters to congress people or senators?
If con is the opposite of pro, then could CONgress be the opposite of PROgress. I only see the gov't asking us not to question the actions, but i believe the gov't is only an extension of the people, or rather, a tool that enacts law or petitions by the people and for the people, are we not left to question what our gov't is going to do, because, the internet as Tim created it, was to trade information, to share knowledge and leverage the power of computers working in uniform, but by that same notion, the actuall mechanics and dynamics of the internet is nothing more than a pot full of different operating systems/enviroments/platforms. Let's be honest, do you think the conglomerates of the world are turning somthing that can be pure and beautiful, and can leverage so much potential, into a yuppie cyber mall?
This is one question, with multiple parts. Some of your defenders have asserted that you are only opposed to Intellectual Property in the hands of corporations. Is this true? Do you favor strong protection for IP produced by individuals as opposed to corporations, or are you opposed to strong IP protection generally?
Also, many people in the AIP movement frequently cite the fact that IP has not been historicly enshrined as a "natural right". However, isn't this just an academic question, important only for lawyers when formulating the basis of the law? After all, we have rights to our physical property, but that doesn't bar the government from confiscating it when such confiscation is deemed to have an overwhelming public benefit. In light of that, why do so many people in the AIP movement feel motivated to make it a point that IP is not a "natural right". My own view on this is that it is simply a rhetorical technique designed to nudge people towards the AIP movement's point of view, but I'd be interested in your take on this.
Finally, what say you to the irony of the fact that if I OCR your book and post it on line I'll get in trouble?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
When the industrial revolution hit, the United States saw a major change in the legal rights of industrial workers. At first the government supported the businesses, but later gave in to popular demand that workers maintain rights above the employers.
Due to popular beelifs, do you think that we are going to see a major legal shift in IT rights from business to individuals, similar to the way rights shifted about 100 years ago?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Hello.
In the future, do you envision some sort of mechanism that will reconcile different laws between different countries when it comes to the creation and distribution of online content?
I suspect that there will be as there are already certain structures in places (such as the World Intellectual Property Organization) that seem to take steps toward this goal. However, to refine my question, do you believe we will see any organizations more oriented toward the rights of world citizens rather than multinational corporations (or zaibatsu, as one might call them ^_^)?
Thank you.
R. Suzuka
(For this, I'm going to beg you to ignore any nicities, political considerations, and even the Constitution. We're talking purely feelings here, intellectual rationalizations on what is either possible or likely need not apply. And since this is Slashdot, you don't even need to care if anyone likes it.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Talking about various slashdot issues with friends and family has made me realize that ensuring that (new) technologies are not detramental our social values, rights and freedoms is a very difficult cause due to the lack of knowledge by the casual user (ie, end user).
I'm curious about what you think are effective ways of ensuring that our technologies continue to uphold our basic and civil rights when the populations you are attempting to protect will never be well versed in the details of both the technologies and the cause? Or, more generically, how do you amass popular support for issues that are too complex for the popular vote to comprehend?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Lessig,
Given that intellectual property ownership is justified by the need to provide an incentive to create new ideas, what is your view of the of the appropriate time duration of intellectual property ownership? Lifetime of human inventor/creator? Fixed period of years? Indefinite?
Is there a coherent rationale for duration of ownership other than arbitrary legistlative choice?
Also, does IP ownership serve other goals (have other justifications) besides fostering innovation, that might be met by other means more effectively?
http://freenet.sourceforge.net using strong encryption will become more common as means to exercise free speech and circumvent these "legal" violations of the constitution? Limburgher
You are not the customer.
I just wrote out way too long of a question, so I'm deleting and starting over.
Members of the judiciary are largely unqualified to comment or judge upon issues of a technical nature, simply because their careers do not incorporate a great deal of technical knowledge, and also because they have not sought it (and I don't blame them, probably didn't have time) on their own.
Now, they *are* qualified to comment on matters of criminality, which are supported by a huge amount of precedent, legislation, etc that has been repeatedly modified, challenged, or simply let stand.
However, there are new "crimes" coming into being, called "cybercrimes" by the buzzwordish. Our judges, lacking technical skills or a real awareness of digital culture, are passing judgement in cases that have either very loose or no precedent to be found, or that are the result of new and innovative legislature (see: DMCA).
My concern is that the judges who are making the decisions are the least qualified to do so -- that we won't have a lot of judges with a high awareness of the intricacies involved for several years. However, the judges presently seating are essentially creating a body of law to govern what they do not understand.
My question: How large of a threat will these precedents pose to the continuation or reclamation of freedoms? Will we be able to take back the ground we've alrady lost, or will the intricacies of the legal system vis-a-vis tort & precendent, ensure that we cannot?
-l
(this one is way too long too. I just can't seem to make it fit)
Have all of the piecemeal "adjustments" taken copyright law beyond repair as Jessica Litmann says in her book, "Digital Copyright"? Do we need to start over after throwing out the current copyright law, or should there be legislative attempts to correct the problems in the current law? What would be a good balance between creators rights and "fair use"?
What do you think we, as a community and as a society, can do to preserve our online freedoms?
In the early days of the automotive industry, GM was effectivly immune to lawsuits (what's good for GM is good for America!). In the earliest part of this century, there was an attempt by the publishing industry to prevent the resale of books. Similar events are now happening in the tech sector with attempts by the BSA to ward off liability issues related to software, laws against software resale, and even new problems such as patenting of genes and other expansions of IP law inconsistent with the goal of moving information into the public domain while rewarding its creator.
My question is; will the influence of the software industry fade as these new technologies become less new or will these trends, which seem to contradict legal precedent, only gain legitimacy as they establish a precident of their own?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Effectively, as I have understood the term "common", the land, or perhaps rather the right to recreation on any land is a common around here.
While this has a very long tradition, the law has come under attack from various groups, often arguing that if no money is invested in preparing recreational areas for people, people will not be able to use the land for recreation.
Would you think that this attitude has some resemblence to the notion that without the labels, no music will be made, as there will be no money to be made from making music?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Dr. Lessig,
To me it seems that for the majority of my lifetime (Reagan administration - now) has been a time where the United States government has to an increasing degree used the inherent 'checks and balances' in a much more forceful way than perhaps they were intended. To be more specific, congress seems to be passing many more laws at are questionably, and even at times blatantly unconstitutional. The large amount of time involved in judiciary process allows lawmakers to pass such questionionably unconstitutional bills knowing full well that they may only last four to eight years or so.
While this delay may have been less effective in the past, in the "Internet Age" four to eight years is enough to wildly shape emergent technologies and processes to the government's whims (which by extension is the lobbyists' whims in this day and age).
Do you feel that these 'temporary' laws (such as the new anti-terrorism bill, which I believe even has an explicit expiriation date) have a place in modern US government as it is now?
Dr. Lessig,
Any security protection will deter 80-90%of the people. Of the remaining people, 1-2% will not be deterred by anything and the rest will take advantage of the work of the 1-2%. Copy protection doesn't work in the digital world as well as it works in the analog world. It would seem that perhaps the laws governing the digitial world ought to be different from the analog world, perhaps even different for different types of digital "ideas".
What is your opinion of the best way to implement copyright, patent, or other Intellectual Property protection for authors while protecting fair use rights of consumers?
I've heard you interviewed several times, you've asserted that today's Music industry is deliberately trying to impede technological advancement by digging their heels in against new delivery technologies such as Napster, P2P networks, MP3.com, etc. You've likened this to the Horse and Carriage industry fighting against the adoption of the automobile.
While I agree with you that these industries are obviously resistant to these sorts of technologies, I can't make the leap and say that they are stifling the technology itself. As proponents for these 'file sharing' technologies will tell you, they are content neutral. The copyright owners are resisting having *their* copyrighted material copied and distributed freely and without compensation. I don't see that they are against the technology per se.
If the only viable way that these technologies are able to develop (i.e. get funding, have sufficient network externalities to be useful as a sharing network, etc) is on the backs of the copying and trading of copyrighted material, then maybe there is no substantially non-infringing use for them. Sure, you could come up with 1000 *theorhetical* uses for the technology, but only one realistic one, which also happens to be based on infringement.
With all that said, I've burned my share of Napster/Morpheus/KaZaA mp3s, and am damn glad that VCRs weren't smothered at birth, etc. But I'm having a really hard time reconciling the two views, and when I try to argue against the copyright holders, my two solid arguments are:
1.) Copyright law has morphed considerably from what the Framer's originally intended and is wildly out of control
and
2.) I want a lot of free music.
The problem with these arguments is that one is arcane, and doesn't resound with too many folks and the other is, well... anyway...
Help me Prof. Lessig, you're my only hope...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Lawrence,
Do you have any comment on the EFFs ongoing support of spammers right to spam or the EFFs defeat in their lawsuit supporting the assertion that a company cannot block a spammer if the spammer objects, as reported here (PDF, Spammer vs Intel)?
Are you aware of any formal training programs that programmers can recieve in IP Law? Certificates etc? Books are great but case law examples as covered by traditional law classes are missed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It seems increasingly appearent to me that Intellectual Property law generally and Copyright law specifically, has become a corrupt instrument whereby campaign finance coffers are filled by metering out favors to large monied special interests. I am basing this on personal observation after having attempted to participate in the process. For example, I participated in several of the Copyright Office requests for public comment that produced easily 10X as many anti-DMCA comments as pro, only to see the Copyright Office ignore what seemed to me to be the clearly expressed objections of actual people in favor of the large corporations who lobbied for the bill. Worse, no serious attempt (in my view) was made to respond to the issues raised by the public. Congress is even less responsive, in my observation.
If and when I conclude that the deck truly is stacked, such that the political process producing copyright regulation is a sham, should I not also conclude that the best course of action is to engage in covert civil disobediance targeted to deprive the specific entities responsible for the corruption of profits? My question is not whether the DMCA is a corrupt law, but rather what moral obligation one has to obey a law that you earnestly believe symbolizes corrupt government.
After all, if push comes to shove, the anti-circumvention provisions are utterly unenforcable (to the point of being a joke) if they are disregarded in ways that do not attract attention. I'm not someone who has decrypted any DVD's or downloaded many MP3's, but I'm wondering what reason there could possibly be not to start.
Should an eleventh circuit be established to
handle cyber cases which span geographic
boundaries and require understanding of
things not imagined before Bill Gates and
Al Gore invented the internet.
where do you *hope* the level of online freedom is in about 2101
Probably not very high, especially now that a war was beginning. The CEO of UniViaDisFox, Richard Cats, has declared that "All your I.P. are belong to us."
Will I retire or break 10K?
And do you see this trend changing anytime soon, and why?
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
The SSSCA is for now, presumed dead, but mutant varieties will most likely appear in the future. With the protectionist environment towards intellectual property in Congress today, future digital rights management variants would continue to provide the means to positively identify individuals online.
A lawyer friend tells me that nothing in the US Constitution grants the right to anonymity (as opposed to privacy) and that a means of identifying individuals online is inevitable. That said, do you think the OSS world should preempt efforts such as the SSSCA and provide an open means of positively identifying individuals online? Has it come down to choosing the path to walk vs. being forced down it?
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
What solutions do you see to Congress's current trend of accepting legislation written by the industries that they are trying to control? (Ex: Copyright legislation written or heavily contributed to by MPAA and RIAA)
Geeks trying to sound like lawyers, or lawyers trying to sound like geeks?
What trends do you see on the Internet today that give you a glimmer of hope about what the Internet is becoming? With recent DMCA rulings, the growing power of WIPO, etc, it seems like a lot of the freedoms people assumed were built into the Internet are getting eliminated quickly. So given that, what do you see that gives you hope?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Background: Recent American books (Rifkin in the Age of Access, yourself) seem to leave little hope of avoiding a tragedy of enclosures. In Europe, the common good of information and software commons benefits from a wider and more politicised support. This is not due to a difference in industry: European corporations are as keen on building enclosures. But there is a stronger resistance in public opinion. Can it suffice, and help with the US situation?
Given how easily the ACLU gets up in arms about very small issues related to things like the 10 commandments on plaques, buildings, etc., why do you think that we aren't reading about the ACLU attacking bad legislation or proposed legislation(s) such as the DCMA, UCITA, the SSSCA (?), etc. ?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
In round two of Valenti vs. Lessig a crucial question arose but due to the to-and-fro of debating was only addressed anecdotally.
The question was one Valenti posed to you. To paraphrase it roughly: "Who cares? I would like someone to explain to me what harm is being done to the world by Mickey Mouse's copyright being extended twenty years. How does that harm anyone's ability to be creative or incentive to be creative."
In the debate you only had the opportunity to present an anecdotal response. (A teacher whose class film projects couldn't be shared due to copyright infringement fears, I think.)
Beyond the anecdote, however, a clear answer would be very helpful. We can all see that the copyright extension bargain was one-sided: copyright holders profited and the public gained nothing. We see the inequity in the action, we sense that the fix was in, and we resent it. But resentment over seeming corruption and the copyright holders' good fortune can only take us so far.
A clear conception of direct harm to the public might be far more persuasive than the secondary harm of the copyright holders getting a really sweet deal. I kept hoping during the debate that the opportunity would come for you to address the question more fully, but it never did.
If the government refuses to prosecute a SPAMMER (in the USA) for violating the DMCA can we use that as a start to destroy the DMCA?
Fight Spammers!
Could a thriving member-owned multinational, VISA, serve as some kind of organizational template for a global trade in ideas?
The SCSL, Jini and more recently the Liberty Alliance seem to be somewhat inspired by the member-owned "chaordic" model. What if such a model were applied to Napster? What if participants who added extra value could earn extra rewards? Could such a model decrease legal friction encountered when trying to add value to copyrights?
(btw -- Visa's founder, Dee Hock, believes that if member-ownership had been extended to all participants, including merchants and cardholders, Visa would be an $8 trillion business today.)
Do you think that we have to outlaw webrowsers, ftp, irc, email that do not have a built-in check that prevents anyone from violating a copyright, trademark, or license agreement?
Fight Spammers!
I have tried to look for books which give an introduction and overview of the law and legal system to adults, but all I can find are Civics textbooks for high school students and practical howto books like those published by Nolo.
Any recommendations?
What are examples of protocols that exist (or are soon to exist or you feel will soon exists) that would limit the freedom we currently enjoy? By freedom, I mean the freedom to communicate my thoughts or creative works freely with anyone else on the internet. I don't assume that I have a general right to distribute or copy anybody else's material without permission though I think I should have the right to sell (with the result that I no longer own or have it) anything I buy.
Dr. Lessig,
Any security protection will deter 80-90%of the people. Of the remaining people, 1-2% will not be deterred by anything and the rest will take advantage of the work of the 1-2%. Copy protection doesn't work in the digital world as well as it works in the analog world. It would seem that perhaps the laws governing the digitial world ought to be different from the analog world, perhaps even different for different types of digital "ideas".
What is your opinion of the best way to implement copyright, patent, or other Intellectual Property protection for authors while protecting fair use rights of consumers?
It still reads like a math equation, there is simply no way to simplify it for the common person to be able to read.
That's completely beside the point. Comprehensibility is not a criterion for first amendment protection. The courts have upheld publishing of the details of making nuclear weapons as protected by the first adendment, even though such descriptions inevitable read like science and are incomprehensible to the layperson.
The simple fact that it is human language, clearly expressing ideas and not merely implementing them, is what needs to be proved to a judge. The fundamental question: is code a machine, or is code speech? The answer, of course, is "both" -- and we need to help judges wrap their brains around that fact.
What do you see as the social and legal impact of so called 'digital divide' between the 'haves' with ready net access and the 'have nots' without such access? Are there steps, legal, social or otherwise, that should be taken to minimize this divide? If so what should those steps be?
Note that this is also true of Australia, France, and China and each of their respective populations/legislatures.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
No offense, although I'd understand if you took it that way, but you seem to be one of those types of people whose primary interest seems to be building up his or her own little (or large) cult of fanboys. Just as Nick Petreley and Mary Jo Foley seemed to adopt a life goal of being heroes of Microsoft-haters everywhere, it seems like you also crave the adulation of a similar niche. A bit broader than the Microsoft-hater group, albeit with a big overlap, but also including a lot of the "Information wants to be free, d00d!" crowd.
Basically, I'm just curious (and I'd love to know how Nick and Mary Jo feel as well) if you really find such a position to be very satisfying. On the outside looking in at the situation, I'd have to say that it always reminds me of that great Anthony Michael Hall line from "Sixteen Candles," the one about being "King of the dipshits" and whatnot. That ring any bells?
Many of your bio-blurbs state that you clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who is the most conservative justice on the current court.
In contrast, your own recently published writings have taken a more liberal or libertarian viewpoint on many issues.
I'm curious to hear about how your time as Scalia's clerk affected your views. What did you learn about civil liberties and technology law while helping to draft opinions for Scalia? Have your views changed since then? If so, why?
In his recent testimony before Congress John Ascroft asserted that they have no oversight powers on him or the Justice department. He followed up by pointing out that he reported to the executive branch alone and asserted that people who raised fears of lost freedoms were "helping the terrorists."
Coupled with theat Bush is currently seeking to regain the fast-track trade negotiation powers that were once bestowed on his predecessor. Such powers would make it only easier for him to craft international DMCA-like agreements that would then change U.S. law without the full involvement of the congress.
My question is, how free is the executive branch in these areas? Are they truly operating without Judicial or Congressional oversight or is it just right now? Can we expect Ascroft to continue with his free reign? Can we expect Bush to craft more international DMCA treaties via the WTO?
Irvu.
An issue that has recently popped up in courts has been the legality of EULAs (End User Licence Agreements) and how binding they really are. According to what I've been reading, the consensus of courts has been that EULAs are more restrictive than existing copyright laws. More specifically, most software is in a state where you can only use it on one machine and never copy or resell it. The recent rulings imply that software can be bought and sold and used like books - you can burn the book, modify the book, then sell it to someone else. Obviously, the software world won't ever get that liberal with its interpretation of those laws, but there will be changes to how EULAs are made and enforced. Where do you see the future of EULAs going?
t.
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
What, in your opinion, would be the best way to revoke the DMCA? Should we continue working this through the courts, or focus our efforts on the Congress, or something else?
I think one of the recurring questions that underlies many legal issues on the Internet has to do with jurisdiction: How do you even determine a location in which an activity is taking place in order to decide which laws might apply? This question arises in topics as diverse as suppressing so-called hate speech or levying sales taxes. It's inconceivable that every government on the planet could possibly agree on a universal set of legal standards for the global Internet, and yet it's equally implausible that governments will maintain a hands-off approach in perpetuity (as much as many of us might hope for it). Given the seeming catch-22 inherent in this situation, I'd be very curious to hear how Mr. Lessig thinks this will play out over the next decade or so. (I'm less interested in the philosophical arguments about why things should be one way or another than I am about a pragmatic assessment of what scenarios seem most likely.)
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
An engineer friend of mine started law school this
fall. I have become intrigued by the idea as I
continue to follow all the technology-related legal trends and cases. However, I wonder if someone with a technology background entering law school now would graduate in time to effect change from within the legal system on these issues and if not, what can a non-lawyer do from outside to help?
Professor Lessig,
What can those of us concerned with the enroachment of intellectual property laws physically do to combat the large corporate intellectual property right owners? Are there clear steps for us to take?
Though I could be wrong, I fear there is no clear agenda for the cause you are championing. And even if there is a game plan in place, no concerted, organized effort exists to carry it out. How do you propose going about drafting a game and who is in the best position to do it? If there is a plan in place, what do you need us to do to push it forward?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The doctrines of Fair Use and First Sale are the primary rules by which the ordinary citizen retains any real rights under copyright law and have preserved a balance of power between the copyright holder and ordinary citizens. These two rights appear to be under siege these days, even though they are codified in US law. Is the use of the DMCA by copyright holders to enforce greater and greater restrictions on the use of their copyrighted materials the source of this attack, or was the balance between copyright holder and citizen shifting for non-technological reasons even before the DMCA was enacted in 1998? Is there any sign that Congress or the Judiciary recognize this conflict and will take any action to preserve this balance?
As a non-American I find it quite odd that, should I ever visit the USA, I can now be arrested for commiting acts of reverse-engineering that are perfectly legal in my country. Do you feel that the USA is entitled to extend the jurisdication of its courts in this way?
.nl sites selling pictures of a 16 yr old having sex, human cloning etc). Is there any way to resolves these contradictions between nation laws without resorting to a world government?
If so, how would contend with an American being arrested in the UK on charges of firearms possession back home, or a Dutchman being arrested in New York for smoking cannabis in Amsterdam. And if not, how should the USA deal with countries who don't comply with its laws? What is to stop other countries offering services to US citizens that are illegal under US law (eg.
I've been reading your book, "The Future of Ideas", with great interest. I was especially struck with your outline of how AT&T developed into a government protected monopoly, and found the early part of that history eerily parallel to our experience with Microsoft.
Do you see parallels between Ma Bell and Microsoft in this respect? Could it be possible that, perhaps with MPAA and RIAA support, Bill Gate's enterprise could become an officially protected monopoly, with federal proscriptions on how computers can develop?
"We sat and watched...as the Moon rose...for the very first time" - "The Carnaval is Over", Dead Can Dance
Any ideas on how to make the internet truly separate from control by nations and entities who relay traffic?
With most P2P systems, the solution is obvious: Law enforcement should connect to the networks themselves, seach for copyrighted material, download it to check that it really is copyrighted, identify the criminal by IP (hard, but not very hard), then prosecute. That sort of "undercover work" is essentially what they've been doing with prostitution for decades, a more victimless crime.
With Freenet, though, it's impossible to find the person who inserted copyrighted material. It's impossible to find which node you're getting it from. It is possible to tell which node you're immediately connected to is automatically caching and passing you copyrighted material, but is that enough to prosecute? If not, then the Freenet people are currently debugging and improving the ultimate piracy network. If so, then the very act of running a Freenet node would be illegal... and it would be very hard to distinguish the Freenet node's actions from those of, say, every router and proxy server on the internet.
Read thing you have written, Ideas (I will admit I have not finished it yet, I just got it in the mail a few days ago) and this conference paper as well as Code to some extent, I get the idea that what you call for is not possible under the current political system. The distributors of the 20th century want to keep their hold on the right to distribute without competition from the common person and they will not support a politician that advocates a system that will challenge theirs. Generally it seems as if working within the current political system is not possible if we (the ones who will be benefited by the new "regime" as you call it in Ideas) want to protect the commons. In light of this, would you advocate starting a new political party with this as part of its platform? Or do you think that corporate money will always be in American politics and that the only way to protect the public domain will be for producers to mandate that their work goes into the public domain much like Open Source software does?
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
128-bit encryption is on the vast majority of internet-connected desktops now. There's absolutely no way that it's possession or use will be made illegal now ("Okay, Granny, we're putting the cuffs on. You should have downgraded your web browser, and you definitely shouldn't have clicked on that https:// link! What do you mean, you don't understand what you did wrong?"), and so any software that wants to escape monitoring can make it's communications indistinguishable from secure HTTP.
Just the first thing that came to my mind.
Did you mean Morphius or Morpheus? Both seem to be on topic :)
Could you comment on the enforceability of the Gnu General Public License? That is, if a violation is found and cannot be resolved amicably, what kind of legal action can effectively be pursued against the violators, particularly when the original product is not being licensed for money? Also, to which jurisdictions do you think the GPL applies?
The tendency in the past has been for applications to do more and more, and have plenty of options. Now, companies aren't as concerned with what users want; they're more concerned with controlling that user's experience.
What stops Microsoft from altering IE so it doesn't show certain pages? What stops Microsoft from routing page views? Nothing. The browser is the choke point of the web.
It seems unthinkable that a company would alter its software to prevent users from accomplishing certain tasks, but it is entirely likely from where I stand. The functionality should be part of the commons. A browser should not influence the information. I suppose we could argue that Netscape did the same thing.
The final twist of the knot is the DMCA. If the browser architecture won't do what you want (no option to stop its search behavior, for example), why don't we just hack the app? You can't. That's a violation of the DMCA. So you're not allowed to alter your browsing experience. You have to take the one that's given to you.
I guess my point here is that functionality is a rightful part of the commons. We shouldn't be denied it by monopoly or anti-hacking law. Is there any chance that the right to do things is going to be recognized?
As it stands we are utterly at the mercy of Microsoft's next alteration of the browser interface...
Do you feel that the current taxonomy of IP (copyrighted expression, patentable ideas) is sufficient? Do you think that new categories of IP should be recognized and regulated with different laws (e.g., an IP category for software that would provide copyright-style protection for only a short term, something similar to the terms provided for patents)?
I'm a first year law student, and I am very interested personally in computer-related law, copyrights, etc. I hope to specialize in some field along these lines, e.g. copyright litigation, once I finish school. Hopefully, I'll be lucky enough to be able to 'fight the good fight.' Unfortunately, I don't have the background in the hard sciences or engineering I'd need to even take, much less pass, the Patent Bar, which, as I know, is an important requirement of many IP firms. Given this, do you have any suggestions which might be useful in any way?
Thanks very much for your time
(And now, back to exams. Nothin' I like better!)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Dr. Lessig,
In you book Code (which I am currently reading) you put forward an example, to make a point about constitutional ambiguity as often relates to technology, about how a hypothetical Internet worm, crafted by a law enforcement agency, could be interpreted as violating the 4th ammendment or abiding by it, depending on which intent you believe that ammendment to satisfy.
I have to admit that there is an aspect of this example that bothers me, as much as I've enjoyed and been challenged by the rest of the book so far. I very well understand the point you are trying to make and accept the scenario as described for that end, however there are some serious real life problems I do not believe the example addresses.
Would you concede that there exists a greater possibility of cost and/or burden to the persons being searched with an Internet worm than you might have anticipated when formulating the example?
There is an issue from current discussions in the computer security field that might better inform why I ask. Often, when the worm of the week or virus of the day is discovered, someone suggests coopting the replication code of said agent but with a "good" payload, such as patches to fix the exploit the original pathogen used to infect a system or some other seriously low level system alteration intended to result in better future security of the compromised system.
I am of the camp that believes this would be the worst possible mistake for addressing infectious, free ranging code. The argument against goes something along the lines that no code is ever perfect and even a slight mistake in the most well meaning code could have disastrous consequences. There are additional arguments about dilution of integrity checking and problems undoing such a payload, but they are not as applicable to your hypothetical law enforcer bug as it's state purpose is just to sniff for some predetermined illegal document.
Don't you think it's possible that a small defect in an FBI crafted worm could introduce cost and burden equivalent to or far beyond what is incurred with a traditional property search? Were you ignoring these concerns for the sake of your point about ambiguity or are you genuinely unconcerend at the prospective of a well meaning virus deleting hundreds if not thousands of innocent users' hard drives? How about the prospective of a malicious person coopting such a bug to do intentional harm, as is often the case after a new Internet pathogen is discovered (Code Red begat Code Red II begat Nimda, etc.)? Wouldn't suggesting systems be "friendly" to such "official" intruders make any such exposure that much worse?
Thomas Gideon
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Ben Franklin
What are your views on societal transparency, as put forward by David Brin in his book - "The Transparent Society - Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freedom".? (chapter one available online)
In this book, Brin argues that, given the existence and proliferation of surveillance technology, one of the few ways to avoid a "Big Brother" scenario is to make the surveillance networks real-time public-access, and "democratic"/all-encompassing, so that "The watched may watch the watchers". Brin then expands upon the possibly viable, perhaps even pleasant, social structure that might then evolve, rather than the usual dystopian vision of a police state.
(Of course, Popper covered the same ground, but Brin's more accessible, and deals particularly with the technological enabling factors of open societies)
Brin's observation that "In any situation involving a conflict between privacy and accountability, people demand privacy for themselves and accountability for everyone else", is particularly applicable, in my view, to the online-privacy debates. One core insight is that it is the asymmetric flow of information that often gives one group power over another.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Current events teach us that the second amendment rights have fared much better than the first amendment rights. Using what you have taught me about "translation" in your book "Code": The pro gun folks look at the second amendment and reason that it is primarily about guaranteeing the general population recourse against a repressive government. (I would also like to believe that it offers us recourse against repressive corporations, and I believe that it has worked this way in the past.) Going a step further, I would assert the openness of the Internet is a much more effective weapon against repressive governments and corporations than firearms, (well, maybe excluding some weapons of mass destruction .) In other words, it is time to take the second amendment away from the gun fetish folks and give it to the geeks!
My question is: Does this make any sense? Is it possible to use the second amendment to protect the Internet, and fight off the DMCA? (I am ignoring lots of obvious connections between gun manufactures and folks who write code which MAY be used to violate the DMCA.)
BTW, thanks for your excellent work. Because of you, there are now eight books by lawyers on my bookshelf. Hope it helps me write better code <g>.
My wife will soon (in 2 years) be attending law school, and wishes to focus on constituational law. I am an avid open source user and programmer. We have discussed free software legal issues, read your books, and listened to talks by you. . . She isn't a programmer (or a techie).
So my question: What would you recommend for a student of law (in regards to open source legal issues). Where are the places to study (under you, or does location matter?)? What should her focus be? Are there internships or volunteer work you would recommend (within EFF or GNU or ?)
Thanks for any advice. And thanks for your work.
why is it that you didn't protest with us in San Fran that day with RMS, Perens, Marti and myself?
Just curious.
-marcia
Dr. Lessig,
Every slashdotter swoons at the invocation of your name. We all love you.
But this is not the case with lawmakers in DC: in your speech at LWCE this fall you mentioned that many in Congress are fed up with you. To them, you are seen as a radical whose soothsaying has become nothing more than annoying. I'm curious if you think that the EFF is on track to gain a similarly distorted and damaging "fringe" reputation. If so, what is to be done?
Maybe you can also comment on the trend in general: if we in the technical community, who know the truth, are increasingly marginalized by ignorant laws and frighteningly effective rhetoric by goons like Valenti, what is to be done?
I've had to take a long hiatus from my project for various reasons, but now that the appeal was lost, I plan to restart it. On my list of things is to change from my style of translation to Jonathan Baccash's, which is better in several ways, while retaining my code's ability to deal with preprocessor directives (which Mr. Baccash's code lacks). If anyone feels like sending me diffs, I'd be much obliged.
Please let me second you on this question...
I've seen that many laypersons have difficulty in understanding the challenges and dangers of how our laws and freedoms in the technical world are developing. How do I explain to my family that they are potentially losing their freedom and privacy when I can't seem to find a common ground for discussing the real issues ? They certainly seem to get tired of my seemingly endless "technobabble", however patient they try to appear to be.
On a lighter note, there is a series of television commercials for the Earthlink ISP (I think?) running in the US lately that I have found useful in helping.
In one, a young lady gives her number to a guy she meets. The two guys sitting nearby offer $5 to buy the number from him right after he gets it... the advertiser's point being "do you know what *they* are doing with your information?"
A second commercial has a fellow walking to work where strangers on the street are commenting on his recent web travels. "I hear you're job hunting... how's the knitting hobby going Bob... love life on a downswing ?" - absolutely Hilarious ! and something that my layperson friends did very readily identify with !
Thank you, and keep up the good work
Dave Taylor
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
In the Constitution, the founders, products of the book-powered Enlightenment, naturally gave a special monopoly (copyright) to writers to give them a weapon with which to fight entrenched cultural interests. These monopolies only granted a fighting chance, however, as the capital required to publish was always greater than the resources of writers. So the Copyright Monopoly was created, and was reasonable, because publishing was expensive.
But, a few decades ago, technology made it possible for certain publishers (studios) to beat the creators -- analog recording (film and vinyl) required a studio not only to make copies, but to produce the work in the first place. The creator was stuck in the bind of having to have a studio to be heard and seen. The studios used this advantage to force creators of music and movies into a work-for-hire situation. The Copyright Monopoly was no longer reasonable, it now gave the creator no help. The beginnings of the cultural wasteland of the 20th Century were set.
About the same time, Congress found it necessary to ration speech by granting a monopoly over the airwaves to licensed broadcasters. The balance that held up for the first few decades was that the broadcasters did not produce the works they broadcast, and they were not consolidated. The Broadcast Monopoly was created, and was reasonable, because there was no other way to get broadcasting done, but to make it a public utility.
But then, starting a couple decades ago, the studios bought out the broadcasters, who after all were a competitive medium. So now the studios had both the Copyright Monopoly and the Broadcast Monopoly. Suddenly, the Broadcast Monopoly was a very bad idea, as it was not a public utility, but a private pipe for pumping the publishers' content. The cultural wasteland accelerated, and the political process was poisoned by the need to go through the broadcasters to get to the people.
Then you get the web. The web doesn't need the Copyright Monopoly, since publishing is cheap. The web doesn't need the Broadcasting Monopoly, as everyone can broadcast without interference. And finally, the web takes the uncopyable analog advantage away fromthe studios, so creators don't need them any more.
So the "problem" created by the web is only a problem in that it means that the power of the studios now serves no public interest, and only remains because of the obsolete legal monopolies they enjoy.
Doesn't this mean that our politics and culture won't be restored to health until these monopolies are not only contained where they are, but eliminated?
And further, how do we perform these miracles from within the system that's been corrupted?
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
To redo 5 pm to 7 pm on april 27 1989.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
In a review of your "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" which I had written, I had argued that there would be technical limits to regulation by architecture, i.e. in that a "perfect control" is not possible (while supporting the rest of the main views). To summarize "Limits to Regulation: Code and Coders" section , I first argue that there is a mathematical limit that prevents us from increasing the accuracy of control arbitrarily and there is a limit due to the distributed nature of control itself.
Computers, being finite things, present us many limits. For instance, there can be only a certain amount of network traffic, memory and computation power. What do you think will be the limits of regulation by architecture in the age of Cyberspace?
Thanks,
Eray Ozkural, CS Dept., Bilkent University
--exa--
Many of the questions I've seen so far involve the question "Is code protected as speech?" My question is rather the opposite. If code is not protected as speech, can it still be copyrighted?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Could a compromise solution be acheived? Perhaps the creation of a new category of intellectual property, something between a copyright and a trademark, that would cover things like Mickey Mouse? It might allow perpetual protection of companies' important symbols, and allow a horse-trading oppportunity to return the copyright protection period back to a more reasonable interval.
'In knowledge is power, in wisdom humility.'
The idea of not obeying corrupt laws on moral grounds aside, what besides the useless letter/email campaign, and the semi-effective action of voting, can the average joe (who doesn't have a grand to spend for ten minutes) do to make certain government actually creates law that serves all, and not just a few corporations?
Do you believe that the internet (as we know it) will eventually be destroyed and replaced by mega-corporation owned and operated feeds? Thus making us have to go back to Fidonet et al in order to have an open and free internet?
(After all - the government is already saying they want a separate internet, companies want the internet changed, and a lot of companies/governmental agencies really hate everyone knowing what they are doing almost instantly. It makes it a bit hard to do the deals they've always been able to make in the past.)
What are your feelings on Microsoft benefitting from the AntiTrust case? (Not just the new computers thing but Microsoft being given the right to do practically whatever it wants.)
(I personally thought that if you were found guilty of something you weren't supposed to be given a reward. Like if you murdered someone. Should the judge buy you a new gun?)
Do we distribute a HOWTO on amicus curie briefs so the techies can engage in denial-of-service attacks on the courts? (just kidding) Do we start a Litigate for America corps of motivated, lawyer-programmers? Should someone persuade Scott McNealy that he should endow his own law school to build an army of lawyers to combat vested interests that hold back progress?
A previous poster had an excellent point: the current cases will build the precedent for the next few decades. Therefore, it's crucial that articulate, techo-savvy lawyers exist and are engaged in the law that judges are deciding now and in the years to come. What can techie lawyers do to best find a fulcrum in the balance between corporate interests and progress?
It seems that recent years has seen patent law slowly displace (never completely) copyright law as the principal means for protecting software and software-related inventions. Is this a positive development in your opinion (e.g., patent term is shorter)? In addition, do you think that patent law is a better "fit" for software, i.e., software is better treated as an "invention" instead of a "writing?" Do you advocate some third type of protection regime that perhaps is a hybrid between the two? (This relates to a previous post which asks you for your "Platonic ideal" IP laws if given a tabula rasa.) Thanks.
In your beginnings, you clerked for Judges Posner and Scalia who have pretty different takes on the Law. Posner, the lead of Law and Economics, and Scalia, a Conservative and not exactly Libertarian Justice. You also served briefly as a Special Expert in the Microsoft Anti-trust trial.
How would you say that these various 'real world' experiences have helped formed the ideas in CODE and Future of Ideas? If you (or folks following your ideas) were to appear before Posner or Scalia, what would you expect to happen?
amongst us would like to ask that most central question:
PL/I or Algol68?
While the more facetious would like to know:
What with the "War on French Tourism - oops, that should really read - Terrorism" threatening to clog up the vital arteries of life in the Western World, is it likely that we will ever get the opportunity to roll some of those obscene laws back?
How well will "sunset clauses" actually work, or is it likely that even suggesting such clauses need to be reviewed, will be taken as treason?
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
1.
How can our University of Massachusetts get away with subjecting people to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish?...
Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml
Quote
"Copyright Policies
By law, individuals generally can make copies of small portions of copyrighted material for their personal use. This is called "fair use". Exactly what consitutes fair use is often a matter for courts to decide. See the WebLaw FAQ for discussion of these matters. As the FAQ suggests, you are usually better off making a link to material rather than copying it
In any case, the use of the Math and Computer Science Departmental Network subjects you to stricter policies than might be accorded you publishing in a public forum such as a commercial ISP or a book you might publish. Whether or not a court would declare it fair use, you may not post on our servers, email to anyone, or post to newsgroups the entirety, nor even significant portions, of copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright owner. We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use. Follow the same rules you learn about for writing papers: use of a few sentences, fully attributed, is OK. More than that usually is not. A copyrighted image is not.
Finally note that just because something doesn't have a copyright notice on it does not mean it has no copyright. Your best strategy is to assume anything you find on the web is copyrighted and if it does not explicitly carry permission to copy, or if you do not have written permission to copy it, you should just link to it. See the aforementioned FAQ."
Quoted
Click on
use of copyrighted material
at
http://www.cs.umb.edu/help/Lab_help.shtml
Our universities should be more open centers of intellectual freedom devoted to free speech, individual liberty, religious freedom, the rights of conscience, legal equality, due process, and academic freedom on campus
See also
http://thefire.org
Professor Robert A. Morris http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/ appears to be a principal among university faculty in devising policies that remarkably for an institution devoted to thought even overrestrictively state "We will not enter into discussions of what is a significant portion or what is fair use."
2.
It is ironical that our university will not even enter into an open discussion of ideas?...
What are your feelings about using the ideas behind the second amendment as a means to think about the right of encryption? I recognize the fact that the 2nd amendment is only about guns. However i do feel that in an information age where power is vested in information not physical things that in order to defend against a tyrnical government encryption will prove far more useful than a 45...
Douglas Calvert
The solution (keeping some kinds of public information off the web) is based on a new notion that there are shades of accessibility to public information. You can't just click through to the information; you've got to move your lazy ass off your seat, away from your blessed screen, and into the court house halfway across the country. And of course, applying the logic of capitalism, you can always find someone to pay who will do it for you. In other words, to get some types of public information you must pay for them one way or another. These concocted shades of information accessibility suggest the idea of imposing some sort of a cost function separating different nuggets information. In the case of public information archived at the court house, its physical distance governs its cost.
But on the web, any two pages are separated by something like zero distance. Any piece of information is more-or-less as accessible as any other. There is and cannot be any notion of shades of information accessibility on the web. Once a nugget of information enters (or leaks into) this public domain, it remains forever publicly accessible. And as search tools improve this information becomes more and more equally accessible. The quasi-public limbo status of information at the court house, I think, does not apply to the web. When you put something on the web (if its useful) it becomes public, a fait accompli.
If the rules of the web rather than the rules of the court house are to govern the future, then perhaps there will be only two kinds of knowledge: the public and the secret. And almost nothing in between.
Are we prepared for such a world? Or do you think we are heading in some other direction?
Why the gov't has never thought of this is a question for the conspiracy theorists... My question to you, Dr. Lessig, is: what are the chances of forcing the gov't to adopt such a policy, based on the notion of transparency in government, freedom of information, etc.. If the gov't stores any of its public records in proprietary file formats, this effectively grants a monopoly to whichever vendor created the format, and forces the public to pay a "Microsoft Tax" in order to view "public" documents. Are there any legal precedents for forcing "openness" on the government?
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
In the name of Digital Rights Management, corporations prevent you from editing or saving stuff they have published to you. This is odd, and at at odds with the spirit of Copyright.
No-one can tell you how much of their book to read, or the order you can read it in. Why do they presume to do so with sound or video? Why must I look at a green FBI notice for 15 seconds at the start of a DVD? Why should I be forced to listen to the information-thin taunts the news programs interlev with the comedy I'm watching beforehand?
It is the act of re-publishing where the potential copyright violation occurs, not the act of viewing or editing.
Is my right to selectively view defended in law?
Its obviously foolish in practice to force me to make an 'all or nothing' decision; is it illegal too?
The value of Mickey Mouse is the enjoyment he creates in the consumers of Mickey Mouse.
Disney is concerned with the profits they can extract from the enjoyment of Mickey.
If Mickey Mouse costs $30 to enjoy instead of $5 to enjoy for consumers, then fewer of them will be able to enjoy Mickey. Value is destroyed by extending the monopoly power to disney.
If Disney did not have to be paid, publishers throughout the world could offer enjoyment of Mickey Mouse in much greater supply at much lower cost.
Disney through profit maximization philosophies destroys value, and happiness, by hoarding it. Hiding it from those children not capable, or not willing to pay the profit tax.
Disney may be responsible for all children's unhappiness everywhere, and they have stolen the right to perpetuate their evil destruction of value for another 20 years.
In your article The Internet Under Siege you describe how corporate interested are "Fencing Off the Commons", restricting the ability of the public at large to publish content. You cite how cable broadband services "has asserted the right to discriminate in the Internet service it provides." I've no experience with cable broadband, but have been strongly affected by the ability of the large telecom companies to drive smaller DSL providers out of business. In my area, DSL is now available only from two providers the local phone company and a major telecom, 3 smaller organizations have stopped offering service. There seems nothing to be done about many of the telecom tactics for eliminating the smaller players, e.g. it would take months for the phone company to provision a DSL line, unless you happened to be purchasing the DSL from the phone company. But the law proposed above would seem to work against one of their tactics.
The "standard" contract which I must now sign to obtain DSL service, that is, the contract I must sign unless I pay approximately 10 times the "standard" rate for "business grade" service, contains a provision which says that I may not run any servers. I can't legally publish web pages, create and service my own e-mail address, or otherwise use the Internet connection to allow anybody to contact me. (Can you hear echos of the phrase "voice over IP"?) However, this provision is not enforced and many individuals run the risk of having their Internet access terminated because they violate the "no servers" provision, putting up personal web sites and so forth. With about two lines in a router configuration file, the phone company could easily block all the servers in violation of their contract, but they choose not to do so. Clearly, the big telecoms don't wish to drive customers away to the independent ISPs, which place no such restrictions on Internet use.
If there was a law, similar to some zoning laws I have heard of, which says that contractual restrictions on servers, or bandwidth for that matter, unenforced for a certain period are void, would this not help reign-in the controls which large corporate interests are attempting to place on the Internet? Or would there be little practical effect as the ISP could cut-off service leaving it up to the consumer wait for the courts to re-establish his Internet access?
Karl O. Pinc <kop@meme.com>
I guess you are tired of me by now, but anyway - here is a simple and practical question to consider.
You are wideley considered and acclaimed to be one of the most famous and prominent--and rightly so--legal scholars promoting free software. You are probably only surpassed by Richard M Stallmans pro bono legal counsel professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University.
So - why do you use Microsoft Outlook on your Macintosh?
In theory, practice and theory is the same. In practice, practice and theory is never the same. is this the case or something else?
Regards
Mikael Pawlo .-)
Pine and Eudora user - heresy is my middle name
Pawlo.com
I'm very involved in one of the many community wireless networks which are sprouting up around the world. We are basically trying to build a common property network infrastructure (ie. a network which is open to, and maintained by, the pubic).
... are you aware of us, and if so what advice do you have for us on how we should shape our goals and seek resources to make this network endure?
It seems to me that our ideals fairly directly represent a lot of what you talk about. So my question is
Dr Lessig,
In looking at ways to bridge the gap between the technologically-enabled and the legal / political community, what are the best ways for engineers from the free software view to become involved in the legal community. Is a JD or LLM, with focus on IP or Constitutional law the best method? Do most IP programs actually promote increased use of software patents and other corporate IP abuses?
Mark Larsen
You've written a lot about the sad state of copyrights, but what about the other government-granted monopoly: patents? Now that the MPEG folks are suing Compaq, it seems likely that cease-and-desist lawsuits against the developers or distributors of the variety of free MPEG software can't be too far away. The GPL and software/algorithm patents would seem to be completely incompatible. How do you see the proliferation of such patents affecting software and the Internet?
Jurisdiction on the internet has yet to be truely solidified. How do you think jurisdiction will eventually be settled? Does an e-commerce sale occur at the computer it was bough using, at the server hosting the web page it was bought from, where the company is headquartered? Can e-commerce survive without answering this question?
You speak of the MP3 format in your excellent book. You do not, however, mention that the format is not really "commons." If I were a struggling artist I would need to find the $10k or so to give to Thompson Multimedia (initial licensing fee) before I could use the MP3 format for distributing my work. This seems relevant given overall tone of your book but it is strangely absent. What are your thoughts?
If you use ad-blocking software, are you stealing from the web site? Morally and Legally?
Ads are used to pay for the site, some sites rely on ads to pay for they bandwidth that we as the viewers are using. By going to the site, you're agreeing to a terms of service and agreeing to view what they give you to view.
On the flip side, are pop-up ads stealing from the viewer?
When you go to a site, are you giving them the right to open an application our your computer, there by using your ram, your processing power, and your hard drive space.
What about flash, or any other plugin? If we allow those to run, do we allow anything to run?
Intelligence is a matter of opinion.
What do you think about making a law that says that any judge or lawmaker who makes laws on Technology be functional in that actual technology, e.g. just like the FCC knows frequency and power and makes rules for electronic transmitters and receivers, so too should a judge or lawmaker be functional in (ASM, C++, HTML,PHP, JAVA, PERL, ASP, CFM BASIC etc....) in order to have the AUTHORITY to pass laws in this arena. Thereby stoping the unenlightened or mischievious judges and lawmakers from even having a say at all. Okay, to clarify... Judges and Lawmakers that deal with Technology MUST be adept and able to understand that technology they are passing laws on, not to be interpreted by outside individuals who dictate to them how something does or does not work. If they are not certified and educated then they have no authority to make law on things that are beyond their comprehension.
This is a very serious question.
Thanks.
do you think it is possible to form a litigation and lobbying plan, like the step-wise civil rights cases of forty years ago, to redeem fair use, the first amendment and establish a bulwark of digital rights? haphazard cases like napster, skylarov, corley (and even golan) aren't enough. don't we need a digital rosa parks?
-dh
No, the constitution is pretty clear, no right not granted the gov't is still reserved to you and me. Privacy has changed meanings since 1776, I think.
But anonymity is interesting. Do you think anonymity was more or less prevalent in the Framer's time? I suspect, since even in the largest cities of the time, people knew a lot more about those living around them. Anonymity seems to be a artifact of modern times, not some lost right. So the wonders of modern communication, the onset of the Global Village, brings with it all the same wonderfulness of living in a grass hut next to a couple of newlyweds. You don't get to live in a village, global of otherwise, anonymously.
I've been in the camp that thinks that all's fair in the digital relm. Whatever can be locked can be unlocked and whatever code could be implemented by the east coast that attempt to control/limit the flow of information can be built apon to do the opposite by the West Coast coding freedom fighters. This presents a difficult problem for those seeking to maintain control. The better control, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to the consumer!; I feel this should be the number one issue on how to advance copyright reform and I feel like most companies make product format/design decisions not based on what is good for the consumer, but rather how best to fatten their bottom lines. Ever get pissed when mcdonalds become tight with their katsup? As a consumer, I refuse to purchase anything that requires propritary storage medians, ie.. dvd's, sony devices with memory sticks or makes me pay for proprietary software that I will not use, etc..
I believe copyright law as it pertains to digital works has already gained the same enforcement priorities as catching citizens illegally crossing the road. I also feel most of the east coast code is more bark than bite, designed to create fear to obtain compliance.
My question is this..Since copyright has traditionally had it's roots in censorship and political control, how do you think we are currently being censored/controlled in the digital relm of the internet and what is the best stratedgy on combatting the IPDroids who seek to control us with their hidden code?
--If the game makers are selling their boxes at a loss, why do you think they don't just sell software that runs on every device?