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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.
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.
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
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
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?
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
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 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?
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!
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
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 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
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.
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?