Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions

You asked Stanford Law professor, author and general voice of reason Lawrence Lessig some great questions about rights, law, and the electronic world. Lessig has has gotten back with some fittingly thoughtful answers -- some optimistic, some discomfiting, some biting. Read on to find out what he's got to say.

1) The question of harm
by caduguid

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.

Lawrence Lessig:

Exactly right. This was a great weakness in the debate. It has been a weakness of mine for a long time. In my way of looking at the world, the point is a matter of principle, not pragmatics:

(1) Copyright law silences speech. It you want to set my book to song, you need my permission. If you don't have it, the law will banish your song.

(2) If the government wants to silence speech, it needs a very good reason. And if it doesn't have that reason, it should not silence my speech. Period. I shouldn't have to prove how valuable my speech is before I have the right to speak.

Yet this is just what Jack's question demands: Prove your speech would be better than Disney's. I see it the other way round: Prove the government has a good reason to silence my speech.

Now I do believe the government sometimes does have a good reason. And in particular with copyright, I do believe that the aim of copyright law in general is a sufficiently good reason. Copyright law gives authors an incentive to produce. By offering authors a limited monopoly, it supports their creativity. And subject to lots of lawyerly quibbles, I believe this support on balance produces more speech than it silences. The quid-pro-quo (produce speech and we'll give you a limited monopoly) functions, as the Supreme Court has said, as an "engine of free expression."

But that argument just cannot justify extending the terms of existing copyrights. Extending the term for already produced speech can't produce more speech. Even with Hollywood's help, Congress can't make causation go backwards. No matter what we do, Walt will not produce anything more in the past. Giving Disney the right to control speech about Mickey for another 20 years in exchange for nothing is just to silence speech with no compensating pro-speech benefit. And as there is no pro-speech benefit for this speech-supressing regulation, it should be struck under the First Amendment.

The weakness in this argument, however, is that most people think pragmatically, not in principles. The point for them isn't the ideal; the question for them is how much does it really matter. I've not done a great job in showing that. Others have. Check out, for example, the OpenLaw amicus briefs in the Eldred v. Aschroft case, of law professor Dennis Karjala's website.

But if I had a second (or I guess it's a third) chance, I'd say this to Jack:

First, Jack, this is not about Mickey alone. The retrospective extension of copyright reaches to all works presently under copyright (essentially work published after 1922), not just the favored few. Just think practically about what that means:

In 1930, there were 10,027 books published. Today, 174 of those books are still in print. Yet it would be illegal because of copyright law for Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg to take those 9,853 books not in print and make them available on the Internet for free - at least without tracking down the present owners of those copyrights and getting permission.

How hard is that?

Almost impossible. There is no requirement that copyright holders register. To track down the current holder of a copyright from 1930, therefore, would require first determining whether the author was alive, and if not, then which of his or her relatives were alive, and one once you found a relative, who among the relatives received the copyright at issue, and then whether they'd be willing to let this decaying book be digitized. Bottom line: without an army of lawyers, it is impossible to imagine making these books available because of the regulation of copyright.

What justifies this? If the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (passed in 1998, adding 20 years to existing copyrights) had not been passed, then all work through 1943 would be now be in the public domain. Project Gutenberg, Eric Eldred's Eldritch Press, Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive could all make this stuff available to others for free or, as Dover Press does, for money. But as it is, because of the law, this stuff will fall into a black hole of legal regulation. As Brewster Kahle said in his Amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the Eldred case, we are at a point where we could put all human knowledge onto the net. Yet legal regulation stops us. Why?

Second, Jack, what about the new work that gets quashed by this perpetual extension? After we argued the Eldred case in the DC Circuit, a woman approached us with a story about a play she had written based on a work published in 1923. She had worked for almost 10 years writing the play, but the copyright holders would not grant her the right to publish or produce it. In 1998, the copyright was to expire; she had received a commitment to produce the play. But after the Sonny Bono Act, the underlying copyright was now extended for 20 more years. Her words were therefore silenced.

What could possibly justify this? The book published in 1923 was not even in print. Why should the government be in the business of threatening new authors in defense of a work that has all but disappeared? How many other creators will look at this reality and, thinking practically, say: "it's just not worth it. The hassle is too great. The uncertainty too high."

There are thousands of examples like this, and many times that that we could never know: At the debate, I told the story of an elementary school that had made films based in part on other film, and how it couldn't even display its work without fear of the lawyers. I told the story of Alice Randall who wrote "The Wind Done Gone," telling the story of "Gone With The Wind" from the perspective of African slaves. The Mitchell Estate told Alice Randall she couldn't publish her book. It took months of high price lawyering before she was granted the right to publish. How many Alice Randall's would simply say, forget it?

Valenti said the Randall example is insignificant. But what makes it insignificant? An author wants to tell a counter story about one of the most influential books of the last 100 years, and she can't do so without the permission of the estate of the original author. This is America, but you need the permission of a lawyer before you can criticize a favored author?

Again, there are many others who are better at this pragmatism stuff. To me, it just feels insulting. You want to tell the Alice Randalls of the world that they need the permission of a lawyer before they can speak? I want you, Jack, to justify that rule. You tell me I have to justify Alice Randall's right to speak? I want to say in response something we lawyers don't say enough: Bullshit.

2) Is Copyright law a sham?
by bw

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.

LL:

I am not against copyright. I think the copyright our framers gave us, for example (a term of 14 years, renewable once; granted only if you register; for limited kinds of work; and protecting a limited range of rights) was a bit weak, but not much. I would favor a somewhat stronger right than they gave us, but for just about as long.

Yet obviously I believe copyright law has gone too far, at least in the digital age. When the power of creativity has been granted to a much wider range of creators because of a change in technology, the law of yesterday no longer makes sense. It must be changed.

The question is how will it be changed?

Disobedience is one technique. It is risky and increasingly costly. But that's not why I would resist disobedience.

The problem I have with disobedience is that it reenforces the Valenti-way of looking at the world. Copyright hoarders demand increasingly extreme rights so that they may exercise almost perfect control over how their content gets used. In response, the civil disobedience movement sends a message that they should have no control over how their content gets used at all. Between perfect control and no control, most would choose perfect control. And hence, we lose.

Disobedience makes sense when you are saying there should be no regulation of the kind you attack. When Martin Luther King led marches in Selma and Birmingham, he was not calling for a limited, or balanced form of segregation. He was calling for no segregation at all.

But we should not be calling for the repeal of all copyright. We should be calling for a balanced and limited form of copyright - much like the right of our framers - that gives artists the right to earn a living, without giving copyright hoarders the power to veto innovation.

We could make progress in demanding that right if those who got it did something. If, for example, slashdot readers weren't such political slugs, something might happen. If more of you did something about this, whether spamming your Congressman, or giving money to those who resist this regulation (like the EFF), then we could resist this extremism.

I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

3) The Judicial Branch
by lblack

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?

LL:

There was a time when I thought that lawyers wouldn't do too much damage. The first Supreme Court case about cyberspace, Reno v. ACLU, striking down the Communications Decency Act of 1996, made it sound as if the constitution required that lawyers be careful before they muck up this free speech haven. Reno put a strong burden on the state to demonstrate that the state's regulation won't do any harm. That made the future sound hopeful.

All that has changed now. As the courts have shifted from porn to copyright, concern for balance, and limits have disappeared. Courts make illegal all sorts of technology because of its "threat" to copyright, without any concern about whether such regulation will threaten cyberspace and free speech generally.

This is, in part, because courts don't understand the technology. But I don't think it's because courts don't know how to code. I think the problem is that courts don't see the connection between certain kinds of technology and legal values. And this is because we've not done a good job in demonstrating the values built into the original architecture of cyberspace: That the Internet embraced a set of values of freedom; that the end-to-end design constitutionalized the idea that the network owner should not be allowed to veto content or applications; that those values produced a world of innovation that otherwise would not have existed. If courts could be made to see this, then we could connect this struggle to ideals they understand.

Sometimes when I read Slashdot debates, I wonder whether you guys get this connection either. The passion that is expended to defend the right to encrypt is wonderful and important. But just as important to the future of freedom is to assure that end-to-end values don't get corrupted by cable companies or network owners. Just as important to the future of freedom is to assure that essential parts of the network not become corrupted by copyright hoarders. And just as important to the future of freedom is to assure that spectrum remain free from the regulation and control of the state.

Yet these debates about freedom get bogged down on these pages. And this leads me to the greatest pessimism: If you guys don't get the importance of neutral and open platforms to innovation and creativity; if you get bogged down in 20th century debates about libertarianism and property rights; if you can't see how the .commons was critical to the .com revolution, then what do expect from judges?

You guys (not Howard Roark) built an architecture of value. Until you can begin to talk about those values, and translate them for others, courts and policy makers generally will never get it.

4) Leverage the knowledge of technical community
by 2Bits
A lot of obscure laws have been passed, and the majority of the population are not even aware of their existence. However, the technical community is watching the legislation quite closely. And we seem to understand the potential impact and risk on freedom and privacy. But the technical community has a very small influence on politics, and seems almost clueless in "playing political games."

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?

LL:

This is a great question. We need translators. We need to translate the values of the network into terms that nontechnical people get. And we need to watch for changes in the architecture or mix of technologies layered into the network, and raise warnings about how those changes will alter the environment for innovation and creativity. As one of my heroes in the law, James Boyle, puts it, we need an environmentalism for the Internet. You are the environmental experts. You can credibly show the world how changes in the ecology of the Internet will destroy the environment for creativity, innovation, and freedom that it produced.

Will you do that? Again, I am skeptical. Rather than trying to focus this debate, or agree on ways to make others understand, you guys immediately turn these questions into irrelevant bickerings. When someone reported that I had written a book described as the "Silent Spring" of the Internet, that opened up a thread about whether in fact DDT had harmed the environment. Someday, when freedom is gone, and all we've got is the right to whisper our thoughts to those closest to us, our children will look back and ask, why did we think we had the luxury to quibble?

But if you don't want to become translators, if you don't want to write environmental impact statements, if you don't want to try to convince the North in California that if it gets taken over by the South, freedom and innovation ends, then you could do as Torvalds has recommended: give money to those who are fighting the battle, in particular, EFF. I'm on the board of EFF, so blissfully biased about to whom. But whether EFF or someone else, follow Torvalds and the other christ-figures in history: Tithe. Take the cost of Internet access (whether you pay it or not) for one year; send 10% to an organization fighting for your freedom.

5) file sharing and copyright law
by stevenj

What do you think of OpenNap, Gnutella, Freenet, Morphius, and similar file-sharing systems? Do you think it is legal for a person to distribute unauthorized copies of a copyrighted recording or video that way, especially if no commercial entity is involved (e.g. excluding Napster or Morphius)? Should it be legal? (Should it matter how many copies you distribute, or to whom?)

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?

LL:

I support these technologies. More importantly, I support the right of innovators to develop these technologies. But I don't support copyright violations using these technologies.

You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime. The law targets illegal uses of technologies, not the technologies - at least where there is a legitimate and legal use of that technology. Yet because of our extremism when it comes to copyright law, we ban technologies that threaten copyright interests whether or not they have legitimate, independent uses.

6) Microsoft settlements?
by Lumpish Scholar

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?

LL:

The short answer is this: the settlement is fatally flawed. There is no effective enforcement mechanism to assure that Microsoft lives up to the terms of the decree. The "technical committee" does not have the power to interpret the decree. The only entity that can interpret the decree is a federal court. We've seen how well that works: The last decree (signed in 1994) was the subject of the case that began in 1997. It took the courts 8 months to work out the meaning of 20 words.

The decree would be close-to-fixed if it had an effective special master who could monitor and enforce the decree effectively (and no, I'm not interested.) It still wouldn't be a perfect decree - I like the nine states' proposed alternative better - but at least it would have a chance.

But though I've been attacked by Microsoft as strongly as anyone, and though I completely agree with the Court of Appeals that Microsoft violated the antitrust laws, I do believe something that will not endear me to many of you: As I said in my testimony, I don't believe Microsoft is the greatest threat to the Internet. And indeed (and more controversially), there's at least one understanding of how the .NET strategy gets implemented that would reenforce the best of the Internet against the threats posed by the Time Warners of the world and cable interests. On at least one understanding of .NET, .NET would reenforce an end-to-end network. It would resist "intelligence" within the network. And except for the open source and free software movements, it is about the only strategy out there that could produce real freedom.

My claim is not that Microsoft will adopt that strategy on its own. I am not arguing we should trust the company. But I do think that an effective remedy could push Microsoft in the direction of something good, and if it did, the company could become an ally, not an enemy.

I know there are many who resist this view. Many believe MSFT is the devil. I'm not one of those people. And my concern is that if we obsess about old wars, we won't understand the nature of the new.

7) Doctrine of First Sale Dead?
by burris

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 U.S. 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?

LL:

They get away with it because their lobbyists have convinced Congress to change the law. So, for example, the first sale doctrine has been repealed for some content. And it is not being supported with other content.

The history is important, however, to remind people about the balance that copyright law has typically tried to draw. We have never until now understood the rights of copyright to be the right of the author (or publisher) to exercise perfect control over copyrighted material. The framers of our constitution gave copyright holders a tiny set of rights; this is not because the framers we communists. We need, as a culture, to remember that copyright is a form of state regulation. And we need, as political culture, to become, with respect to this regulation, a bit more Republican: Where is the regulatory impact statement that shows that this form of regulation does any good?

8) IP Laws of the Future
by Catiline

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?

LL:

In my book I argue for a number of changes. They include a much more restrictive term - basically 5 year renewable terms, up to a maximum of 75 years. For software, the term would be even shorter, and conditioned upon the software author depositing his or her source code with the copyright office, to be open sourced upon the expiration of the copyright.

More importantly, I think we need to restrict the scope of "derivative rights" more than we do today. Copyright owners deserve to be paid for the use of their work; they should not be allowed to veto follow on work that builds on theirs.

Finally, during a time of technological transition, we need a strong set of compulsory rights so that new content producers and distributors can get access to material to enable these new businesses to take off. Compulsory rights require that the author of the original work get paid, but the rate is either set by the law, or set by a panel to be relatively low. This will give artists more than they would have had, had there been no Internet. But it will assure that innovators can build out the future of the Internet without the control of dinosaur industries.

9) Patents, Copyright and the law community
by gdyas

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.

LL:

There are more of us than you think, but certainly not enough. Again, check out the OpenLaw page, and you'll see over 50 of the most active resisters to this expansion of copyright working together to overturn the Sonny Bono Act. These scholars and lawyer represent a critically important resistance.

That said, we still need more help. I produce lawyers for a living; I watch as many try to find jobs to do good, but find the only available work is within the system. People who understand the importance of freedom and see the importance of protecting the future of freedom on the net need to support institutions that fight for that freedom. Pam Samuelson of Berkeley, and her husband, Bob Glushko, have given an extraordinary amount of money to support clinics at law schools around the country. At Stanford, we also have a clinic that defends hackers (soon to be known officially as "terrorists"). But again, I think EFF has been the most important player in this area.

10) Will the extension of copyright continue?
by Artifice_Eternity

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?

LL:

Exactly right. When Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which we've renamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," we filed a law suit on behalf of Eric Eldred and others. Eldred had threatened civil disobedience. He runs a web based archive of public domain works, and promised to publish works in violation of the CTEA. We convinced him that jail was ugly and that courts may do the work better. We've been litigating the case now since 1998, and have convinced at least two federal judges that the law is unconstitutional. Tight this moment I should be writing a reply to the government's argument against the Supreme Court reviewing the case. That reply is due in a week.

If we get to the Supreme Court, I am certain that we will win. This is not a left/right issue. The conservatives on the Court will look at the framers' constitution - which requires that copyrights be granted for "limited times" - and see that the current practice of Congress, repeatedly extending the term of existing copyrights (11 times in the last 40 years) makes a mockery of the framers' plan. And the liberals will look at the effect of these never ending copyrights on free speech, and conclude that Congress is not justified in this regulation of speech. The Supreme Court doesn't give a hoot about Hollywood; they will follow the law.

It is not enough, however, to win in the Supreme Court. Ordinary people need to rediscover the importance of the public domain to creativity. The Internet could teach this - Brewster's Internet Archive, for example, is a great demonstration of the value of the public domain. But it will take real political action by real people (i.e., not lawyers) to get Congress to recognize what our framers understood.

11) Cyberspace Amendment
by kzinti

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?

LL:

Professor Tribe's article was typically Tribe: Way ahead of its time, and right. But the sad fact is that our liberties have not been eroded because the protections in cyberspace are weak. Our liberties are weak because courts have eroded constitutional protections generally.

The more I'm in this battle, the less I believe that constitutional law on its own can solve the problem. If Americans can't see the value of freedom without the help of lawyers, then we don't deserve freedom. We should be working to help Americans recognize freedom again.

12) Activism by coding
by melquiades

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!

LL:

Again a great question. The answer is more communication between lawyers and technologists. There is ignorance among lawyers and judges about technology no doubt. But there is also ignorance among technologists about the law.

The "code is speech" debate is a perfect example. Obviously, this is an important victory to have -- and indeed, the one good thing that came out of the 2600 appeal was a clear affirmation by the Second Circuit that "code is speech." But among constitutional lawyers, that "code is speech" is not the hard question. The hard question comes next: even if it is speech, how much power does the government have to regulate it. For just because "code is speech," it doesn't follow, under standard First Amendment law, that the government can't regulate code. Think again about copyright law. Obviously, what copyright law regulates is speech. But even though speech, under some circumstances the state can regulate it.

I think the place where technologists could do the most good is by showing the rest of the world something much more fundamental about the network. Not just how code is speech, but also:

(1) how the architecture of the Internet built a set of values,

(2) how those values are fundamentally linked to the most important freedoms in our tradition, and

(3) how changes in that architecture of the net could undermine those values.

Find ways to demonstrate how the architecture built a commons, and how that commons induced innovation: That's the stuff that lawyers, and politicians, don't get.

13) International Freedom
by bfree

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?

LL:

I don't disagree with any part of your description. That was the argument I tried to make in my first book - that the original freedom of the Internet could be changed by relatively small changes in the architecture, and we should expect governments to work hard to effect those changes. I made a bunch of dark predictions in that book. History has proven I was not pessimistic enough.

I don't know what body can resist these changes. I would have hoped the IETF would play a bigger role. And W3 too should see what's at stake. But the fact is that the strongest advocates for freedom are overwhelmed by those who have the most to lose from freedom. The key to our success would be if a strong commercial actor became deeply invested in freedom. Except for its patents, I would have said IBM was that commercial actor. But we'll need more than Big Blue.

14) DMCA
by Amazing Quantum Man

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?

LL:

The DMCA as a whole won't be struck down - ever. But I continue to believe that at least the parts that disable the use and deployment of technologies to protect traditional fair use will eventually fall. At least they will fall if litigation about them could continue. But notice again: the only group out there supporting this litigation (Felten and 2600) is EFF, and EFF's resources are, surprise surprise, limited.

Skeptical on both, though as I've said, I do think there is a way that .NET could get implemented that would reenforce freedom on the Internet. That's not to say Microsoft would on its own follow that path. But it is important to see that if it did follow that path, its architecture could reenforce freedom.

The same could be said about the Liberty Alliance. Nice title, but Sun has never quite resolved itself to the idea of open and free networks, so I'm not convinced Liberty is what it calls itself. I do think we as a community need to develop a much better authentication architecture - one that is not controlled by any one single, or group of companies, but instead a platform upon which authentication services could be built. I hear whispers from Red Hat that they would be interested in such a future. I hope that's true, but its too soon to tell.

The dangers in both .NET and Liberty could be better resisted if we would only develop a consistent and clear message about the importance of neutral platforms to innovation and freedom. When we built the highway system, we didn't say to GM: "if you build the highways for us, you can build them so that GM trucks run better than Ford trucks." When we needed a passport system, we didn't tell Chase Manhattan bank that they could develop the passport system in exchange for a piece of every transaction. In both cases, there was a recognition of the importance of neutral, commons-like, infrastructures upon which others could build neutrally.

We need to relearn this lesson - in general, and in the context of the Internet. You guys could help teach that lesson. Indeed, only technologists have the credibility to speak reason to this idiot power. But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

15) .NET-enabled futures?
by Nikau

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?

LL: p>Skeptical on both, though as I've said, I do think there is a way that .NET could get implemented that would reenforce freedom on the Internet. That's not to say Microsoft would on its own follow that path. But it is important to see that if it did follow that path, its architecture could reenforce freedom.

The same could be said about the Liberty Alliance. Nice title, but Sun has never quite resolved itself to the idea of open and free networks, so I'm not convinced Liberty is what it calls itself. I do think we as a community need to develop a much better authentication architecture - one that is not controlled by any one single, or group of companies, but instead a platform upon which authentication services could be built. I hear whispers from Red Hat that they would be interested in such a future. I hope that's true, but its too soon to tell.

The dangers in both .NET and Liberty could be better resisted if we would only develop a consistent and clear message about the importance of neutral platforms to innovation and freedom. When we built the highway system, we didn't say to GM: "if you build the highways for us, you can build them so that GM trucks run better than Ford trucks." When we needed a passport system, we didn't tell Chase Manhattan bank that they could develop the passport system in exchange for a piece of every transaction. In both cases, there was a recognition of the importance of neutral, commons-like, infrastructures upon which others could build neutrally.

We need to relearn this lesson - in general, and in the context of the Internet. You guys could help teach that lesson. Indeed, only technologists have the credibility to speak reason to this idiot power. But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

Comments

Micro$oft "Settlement;" MOre Pies for MS

[TRoLLaXoR]

By allowing MS to donate hardware and software to schools in an attempt to make amends for playing dirty on so many fronts, the gov'ts involved have allowed MS to peddle there wares free once and collect money thereafter, thus giving MS an in to the education market it wouln't have had before.

MS should be given props for being clever, at least. But a side-effect is harm to others.

Doesn't this seem a little obvious? The first hit is always free.

Missing Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Lessig forgot to write:

"Timothy, STFU."

Aside from that, great responses.

Long

[hether]

Probably interesting, but entirely too long to read. Its the holidays - I'm not in the mood for pages and pages of stuff about law, I'm in the mood for candy canes...

Re:Long

[imac.usr]

Probably interesting, but entirely too long to read. Its the holidays - I'm not in the mood for pages and pages of stuff about law, I'm in the mood for candy canes...
No problem. Here's the only part people like you need to read:

I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

Hope that helps.

Re:Long

[hether]

It wasn't meant to be insightful. It was just meant to be a legitimate comment about the article. It is damn long for a slashdot article. I figured I'd get modded down for being off topic perhaps, but didn't plan on the personal attacks. I guess I should be used to that by now.

I am not apathetic. I am interested in this topic. I am one who writes to my government figures, takes part in the political process, etc. - but I have no reason to prove myself to you! I am just not interested in reading this long piece right now.

Re:Long

[Syberghost]

Probably interesting, but entirely too long to read. Its the holidays - I'm not in the mood for pages and pages of stuff about law, I'm in the mood for candy canes...

Bookmark it and read it Wednesday. Merry Christmas.

Re:Long

[Kid Zero]

So don't complain when you have to pay to sing "Jingle Bells" next year.

Re:Long

[FreeUser]

In response to one of the more level headed, articulate, and insightful discussions on the importance of our freedoms, what some of the root causes of their erosion are, and what we as individuals and technically savvy professionals can do about it, Hether writes:

Probably interesting, but entirely too long to read. Its the holidays - I'm not in the mood for pages and pages of stuff about law, I'm in the mood for candy canes...

and thereby demonstrates why it is profoundly unlikely that our children, much less our grandchildren, will enjoy anything even remotely resembling liberty or freedom in any form, much less the freedom to speak.

Candy canes indeed. Why don't you just go ahead and get your fiddle? Some dinner music might be nice while America^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Rome is burning.

Re:Long

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you represent everything that is wrong with Slashdot.

Re:Long

[hether]

I don't understand what the big deal is! One flippant comment like this has people jumping all over it??

Apparently my failure to read this article and instead post what I considered a somewhat insignificant post will result in the loss of our liberty to sing jingle bells. It will kill the future for our children and grandchildren, it will destroy the environment, bring hell to earth. You're right. I am what's wrong with the world today, a person who said they didn't have time to read something becuase they are filled with the holiday spirit. Damn me!!!!!

Re:Long

[hether]

Oh, were you saying that's part of the article? I thought that was directed at me being apathetic. Sorry and thanks for the information.

Re:Long

[Anonymous Coward]

people who post as ACs are what's right with slashdot? oh wait I'm being hypocritical

Re:Long

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not interested in reading it right now, then don't. But why are you posting such drivel?

It did hilight the 'intelligence' (sic) of the moderation system here, though.

Re:Long

[Pussy Is Money]

The point is, everyone can see that the article is long, and nobody is interested in your desire for candy canes.

Re:Long

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was your apparent need to take the time to tell everyone how you couldn't be bothered to read it that irritated folks. If you have time to post about your lack of time, and then reply to criticism, well, apparently you had more free time than you let on. Given that, it raises the question of why someone who HAD the time to read the interview would instead post a comment claiming that he or she was too busy to bother. Attitude never comes across well, either in person or on the internet.

Re:Long

[naasking]

Oh, were you saying that's part of the article? I thought that was directed at me being apathetic.

Both. Merry Christmas. :-)

Re:Long

[AbsoluteRelativity]

If there is one thing to know about human nature, someone has to make a mess before someone else has to clean it. It would be nice if people were more intelegent about it, be visionaries and be able to guess what the future is going to be like if we keep going the direction we are going, but people are lazy when it comes to these things, I dont mean lazy in a bad way, its just people don't have the time or want to spend the time to learn something that will take years before it makes a diffrence if it makes a diffrence at all. In reality the majority of people have to see a change and diffrence before they realize something effects them. Its like something I read a long time ago from Michael Ambrash (sp?), he said he went from graphics/game programming to a more experimental area of computer programming in I think it was speech recognition or something like that, but he said he liked the graphics programming more because you get direct feedback, that is he did something and it made a noticable diffrence, when people go to a voting booth and vote, there is no immediate diffrence, their lives are not going to be changed in a largely noticable way. They may feel good about it after they vote, but after a while the majority will likely forget as they deal with the details of their lives.

Re:Long

[innocent_white_lamb]

Actually, you do have to pay to sing "Happy Birthday", if it's a public performance.

I don't know about "Jingle Bells", but it's probably the same.

Re:Long

[Anonymous Coward]

what dark hole did you pull that one from? You're trying to tell me that restaurant employees should pay when they sing happy birthday to a customer?

Re:Long

[innocent_white_lamb]

You're trying to tell me that restaurant employees should pay when they sing happy birthday to a customer?

Theoretically, yes. At least, that's my understanding.

As a practical matter, the money-collecting outfit (ASCAP? BMI? I don't know which) collects from Happy Birthday "performances" in television shows, movies, live plays and so on.

Wait a minute!

[joshjs]

"The law targets illegal uses of technologies, not the technologies - at least where there is a legitimate and legal use of that technology."

Does anybody in any position of authority know this?!?!?

Re:Wait a minute!

[King_TJ]

Yeah - my thoughts too!
The comment below is a little disconcerting, because we're dangerously close to where a Smith & Wesson *will* become worried about govt. holding them liable if someone kills a child with one of their handguns!

The problem is much larger than people not differentiating when it comes to computer technology vs. illegal use of said technology. This refusal to differentiate happens with even simple, relatively low-technology products and services!

As a whole, we have a need to shift blame. AKA. It's currently understood that if you do a poor job of shoveling snow and ice off of your driveway, and someone comes along and slips/falls on it, you are responsible if they sue you. Since it's *your* property and they chose to walk on it without your consent or invitation, I fail to see how this makes any logical sense! When this does make sense to lawyers and judges though, how can we move beyond that to encryption and programming issues??

"You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime."

Re:Wait a minute!

[ahde]

actually smith & wesson is playing both sides of the fence. consider their lobbying for "child protections" on guns that helped them get exclusive contracts with many government agencies and police forces

Re:Wait a minute!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it makes you wonder.

The gun-tech vs gun-crime metaphor seems perfectly clear, but for some reason it isn't getting through. I'm wondering about the mechanism there: what is the argument against this metaphor?

The idea that this is all, simply, about "corporate interests" always seems paranoid to me, but I have a hard time formulating any productive counterarguments in this example -- so is it indeed a weak counterargument bolstered by an atmosphere in which the judiciary favors corporate control?

These aren't rhetorical questions; I really am curious about how this metaphor plays out when these issues are being argued.

Re:Wait a minute!

[zeno_2]

I myself do not own a gun, I don't feel I need to. I think its great that we have a right to bear arms and all that, I just chose not to myself. Also, I hope my post is what you were referring to..

What I am really amazed at is this:

Gun manufacturers make a product, which people buy. Some people then take this product, and kill other poeple. The gun manufacturer has no liability in this at all, they continue to make guns, which end up killing people.

Software 'manufacturers' make a product. Lets say this is a p2p program, that is mainly used to transmit mp3's lets say of music that is copyrighted. This software is also used for legal purposes, trading person pictures or whatever. This product causes no sort of physical harm to any person whatsoever. The only sort of harm this particular product causes is the loss of some potential money some large corporation (RIAA). This product is going to be attacked by the lawyers of said corporation, and it will be shutdown. Just because they are 'predicting' the loss of sales. No actual sales have been lost, as they have no way to put a figure on that. Who knows if johnny would have bought that cd if he didn't download it.

Anyway, I guess I find it funny that im better off making weapons that kill people then I am making software that could have potential copyright issues.

Here is another example of computer 'crime' and the law which really scares me:

The crime of distributed computing

This guy put the distributed.net client on 7 machines at his university. He is now being charged with computer tresspassing, and faces a maximum of 120 years in jail. I am really amazed that a victimless crime such as that would carry a large penalty.. life in prison. Does that person deserve life in prison?

Re:Wait a minute!

[Anonymous Coward]

To your first example: the courts ruled that if the software company's servers hadn't been serving up the copyrighted stuff - that is, if the product was pure P2P, without the company's servers involved at all after the P2P software was downloaded (and not even then, if it was downloaded from a mirror - it would have been equivalent, and legal. But they put catalogs of stuff to get via P2P on their servers, so they could do some ad revenue, and there's the illegal act.

To your second example: many difficult to catch acts are punished far out of proportion to the damage the individual act does, on the theory that it will serve as a greater deterrent. I disagree that said theory is enough to justify great punishments, but that is the thinking behind the legislation.

whoa...

[Schwamm]

Real answers to real questions... On /.?

Looks like a typo in there...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Just a comment, looks like the answers to 14 and 15 got mixed together by accident. I assume the answer to 14 was the first paragraph only, since the rest was referring to authentication and .NET.

Re:Looks like a typo in there...

[Anonymous Coward]

No breaking the rules! This is slashdot...you're not expected to read ANYTHING before posting... =P

I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Court

[vaxer]

...because I would LOVE to see Lawrence Lessig appointed!

(I'm not advocating any particular way of opening a vacancy on the Court, mind you... Perhaps Scalia would be so kind as to retire.)

the highest bidder

[Bandito]

I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

This quote seems to contradict itself. We can bitch and moan to Congress about our disagreement with copyright, but face it, those who get it are by far in the minority. Even if a good lot of us complained, the future of creativity and innovation is still sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder because that bid still outweighs the voices of the few.

Re:the highest bidder

[duffbeer703]

Despite your disdain for the political system, the United States is a democratic republic.

When Senators hear alot of complaints about an issue, they immediately see that their jobs are in jeopardy and act accordingly.

Ever wonder why the elderly get so many benefits (like Medicare, SS, etc)???

Because organizations like the AARP are loud and vocal in the pursuit of their interests.

Re:the highest bidder

[Bandito]

When Senators hear alot of complaints about an issue, they immediately see that their jobs are in jeopardy and act accordingly.

This is exactly my point. I don't think that there are enough of us to make a Senator fear for their job.

I don't wonder why the elderly get so many benefits for the reason above: There are plenty more elderly persons in the United States than there are people who get technology.

The EFF and others are loud and vocal in pursuit of our interests, but we're having this discussion now which would seem to suggest that I'm correct that we're not a large enough crowd to make enough noise.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong and Mr. Lessig is correct that there are plenty of us, just not enough of us are making noise.

Re:the highest bidder

[duffbeer703]

If people spoke out, they would convert others.

Does my 95-year old grandfather who was a machinist 40 years ago understand the subtleties of health insurance? No. But he can and does inform himself about what is and isn't in his best interest. He votes accordingly every year.

I don't think you are one, but many techies are smug punks who don't listen to what others have to say. They assume everyone else is too, hence the jaded and apolitical attitudes.

Re:the highest bidder

[ahde]

there isn't enough people in the electorate (counting the majority who didn't vote) to make a Senator fear for his job.

Re:the highest bidder

[psamuels]

Ever wonder why the elderly get so many benefits (like Medicare, SS, etc)??? Because organizations like the AARP are loud and vocal in the pursuit of their interests.

And well-funded. Sure, they have a lot of votes (although I very much doubt the AARP can deliver their whole membership as a bloc -- old people don't have the blacks-vote-90%-Democrat thing going) but they also have a lot of money to lobby with.

The EFF may be able to deliver some votes, but it can hardly afford to wine and dine Congress in true lobbyist style.

Re:the highest bidder

[liquid_schwartz]

I doubt that the senators care at all unless they are near the 6 year re-election time. Most people have fairly short memories. The farther away from re-election I am, the less I need to care what my constituents think. I can always make it up later when the real crunch time is near. The real solution is to allow people to repeal laws if they can get enough signatures. This is called referendum. If we had this ability, then we could have already had the DMCA up for a popular vote. It would lose quite handily in that arena. Unfortunately, this would require a constitutional ammendment. Still, we need to push for this. It's our best (and fastest) defence against the corps.

Re:the highest bidder

[AbsoluteRelativity]

They are more likely to care if, the complainers have an organization backing them up, and/or have a lot of money. (its obviously better to have that money working for you then against you). This includes corporate lobbys as well as religious based lobbys (christians jews etc).

Re:the highest bidder

[Lord_Byron]

And that is why it is so critically important that we take this to the people, not just Congress. The comparison to the environmental movement is not spurious. It was nearly powerless when it comprised mostly people interested in game conservation. Then when Rachel Carson and others made it accessible to normal people, showed then it was something they cared about, within ten years things exploded with the result that we might manage to save ourselves. This needs to happen for the electronic environmental movement, or we will fail, and our children won't know to curse us.

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I suspect that, should any of this come to SCOTUS, that Scalia would actually be friendly to what we're trying to do. He's a strict constructionist.

I'm not sure friendly is the right word, but I can't think of the proper word at this moment.

Absolutely phenominal!

[jd]

Any chance Slashdot could hire him as a guest article writer, from time to time? This is a guy who knows what he thinks& feels, and knows how to put that on paper. A VERY rare beast, indeed! (Mayhap, rarer than the new squiddy thing that's been found. Though I suspect the new squiddy thing might make a more powerful presence in court, versus Microsoft. Especially if it eats the defendents.)

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[Peter Dyck]

I agree.

It's been a while since I've read something as insightful and thought provoking on Slashdot as this article was.

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[EricWright]

Maybe you haven't noticed, but Lessig's work is far more important than writing articles for an online community. I'd rather see him continue his work with the EFF, argue cases before the Supreme Court, and get some of the more ridiculous laws off the books.

THAT is doing something worthwhile. Let's not reduce him to the same level as JonKatz...

Eric

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[karb]

It would be cool to have him around more often. But can you imagine what he is worth? A professor at a prestigious (sp?) school, a lawyer, a revered author and a political figure? I think any of those, by themself, would make him out of /.'s price range :) But he might just do it because he's cool (as is the case with this interview, I assume)

Not that he actually makes any fraction of what he's worth (as is true with many great scholars). It's just easier sometimes to get them to volunteer than to try to afford them. :)

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[c0rtez]

as much as I'd enjoy reading Lessig's take on every little thing, I'm in agreement with the other replies, his time is better spent elsewhere.

You could alwasy go read his books, Code: and other laws of cyberspace and his new one The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

Or jsut check out his website

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[Happy Monkey]

Aieee! Opposing council's tentacles have become entangled on me, and he seems to be having trouble releasing me!

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[ichimunki]

No. His job is creating more lawyers. Fabulous, just what we needed.

And I don't care to be called politically apathetic and proud of it. I maintain a healthy interest in and activity level in politics in spite of all his lawyerly offspring clogging the political arteries. I'm not going into detail, but I certainly fall into the "above average" politically active camp.

But the most important thing you can do to support freedom is to exercise it loudly and often-- historically *nothing* else has been as effective in making changes. And he says he advised Eric Eldred *not* to exercise his freedom by disobeying a flatly unjust law. Since 1998 they've been legislating on this matter-- that's great when it comes to law school graduates getting paid. But it's a terrible precedent to set in terms of appropriate response.

Is that what he'll advise all of us, if something like the SSSCA gets passed and we can no longer distribute Linux legally? Just wait until the lawyers settle it? And by the way keep donating, resources are sparse?

(And before you flame, I am a card carrying member of the ACLU, so I *do* donate to free speech causes)

Re:Absolutely phenominal!

[psamuels]

But he might just do it because he's cool (as is the case with this interview, I assume)

He's far cooler than Slashdot. I hope nobody manages to convince him to waste his time in such a manner. There are so many better things he can do with it.

Rights of authors to control their works (i.e. Gnu

[vkg]

Mebbe these DRM systems will actually help.

No, really, think about it.

If you're a small artist, and DRM actually works, you can put a couple of your songs up on Napster-clones with the copy bits set to "Copy Forever".

Then put the rest of the album up with "Pay me for a licence".

People who want to distribute for free can, as can people who want to police. What's the problem with this?

I think it may just be building a technical infrastructure for trust.

Vinay

PS: and no, I don't like the mandating of DRM - but I think it itself may be savable.

Speaking of Government @# +1 ; Informative #@

[Anonymous Coward]

My complaint about John Ashcroft:

May I be cynical for a bit? I hope you don't mind,
but with Ashcroft's latest barrage of
malodorous notions, I can't resist the urge to make a few cynical comments. To get right
down to it, some of the facts I'm about
to present may seem shocking. This
they certainly are. However, it's time that a few
facts had a chance to slip through the fusillade of hype.

What's my problem, then? Allow me to present it
in the form of a question: Where are the people
who are willing to stand up and acknowledge
that Ashcroft, in his infinite wisdom, has decided
to destroy the natural beauty of our parks and forests? On the surface, it would seem to have something to do with the way that his whole approach is repugnant.

But upon further investigation, one will find that
by allowing Ashcroft to put mephitic thoughts in our children's minds, we are allowing him to play puppet master. As for the lies and exaggerations, Ashcroft's epigrams are rife with contradictions
and difficulties; they're entirely maladroit,
meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited
for a supposedly educated population.
And as if that weren't enough, if Ashcroft is going to obstruct important things, then he should at least have the self-respect to remind himself of a few things: First, a true enemy is better than a false friend. And second, many people respond to his debauched vituperations
in much the same way that they respond to television dramas. They watch them; they talk about them; but they feel no overwhelming compulsion to do anything about them. That's why I insist we pronounce the truth
and renounce the lies.

Even people who consider themselves scornful
foolhardy-types generally agree that Ashcroft's slurs symbolize lawlessness, violence, and misguided rebellion-- extreme liberty for a few, even if the rest of us lose more than a little freedom. One might conclude that Ashcroft is incapable of writing a letter without using
such phrases as "crapulous pop psychologists", "loquacious exhibitionists", "oppressive personae non gratae", or some combination thereof. Alternatively, one might conclude that Ashcroft has a different view of reality from the rest of us. In either case, if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. His historical record of fickle pleas is clearer than the muddled pronouncements of his apple-polishers for a variety of reasons. For instance, the worst sorts of inconsiderate Neanderthals there
are must be treated with political justice, not with civil justice, as they are sincerely not real citizens. Let me rephrase that: I wonder if he really believes the things he says. He knows they're not true, doesn't he? A complete answer to that question would take more space than I can afford, so I'll have to give you a simplified answer. For starters, if we let him cause riots in the streets, then greed, corruption, and tribalism will characterize the government.

Oppressive measures will be directed against citizens. And lies and deceit will be the stock and trade of the media and educational institutions. Even Ashcroft's bedfellows couldn't deal with the full impact of Ashcroft's refrains. That's why they created "Ashcroft-ism," which is
just a garrulous excuse to force square pegs into round holes. He plans to drag everything that is truly great into the gutter. He has instructed
his votaries not to discuss this or even admit to his plan's existence. Obviously, Ashcroft knows he has something to hide. Most of you reading this letter have your hearts in the right place. Now
follow your hearts with actions. I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people. I can therefore assure you that Ashcroft's artifices cannot stand on
their own merit. That's why they're dependent on elaborate artifices and explanatory stories to convince us that Ashcroft's warnings can give us deeper insights into the nature of reality. We can and we must protect ourselves by any means
necessary against the unrestrained bestiality
of stupid, quasi-macabre paper-pushers. And that's the honest truth.

The last two answers

[epepke]

The last two answers seem exactly the same. There's also a stray right angle bracket in the second which suggests an HTML goof.

Re:WHAT?!?!?!?!

[davebo]

Interesting, but too long to read? And this gets moderated as insightful? WHAT THE HELL?

Story after story gets posted about how our rights are being taken away, about how "the man" is trying to bring us down, and thousands of posters respond with "right on!"

and then when somebody who really understands the issues, understands the system, and gives great advice about what we can do to help or organizations to which we could donate to fight for us all, and you decide it's "too long to read at christmastime?" and some other bonehead thinks that's a great comment?

Well, cry me a river.

Awww !@#$ !!

[TheRain]

"I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder."

he caused me to think and want to alter my behavior! DRAT!

:)

Re:Awww !@#$ !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. You don't get it anyway.

Re:Objection

[Anonymous Coward]

do you want to elaborate on that?

Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[mttlg]

In 1930, there were 10,027 books published. Today, 174 of those books are still in print. Yet it would be illegal because of copyright law for Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg to take those 9,853 books not in print and make them available on the Internet for free - at least without tracking down the present owners of those copyrights and getting permission.

This is one of the most significant arguments for reasonable copyright terms, but it should not be forgotten that this goes far beyond books alone. What about all of the films from this era that are quickly disappearing because the copyright holders either don't care or don't even know that they hold the copyright? What about songs about our heritage or songs that have become part of our culture (Happy Birthday comes to mind)? We are in the information age, when our very culture is shifting toward a distributed electronic form, but key elements that either have become fundamental parts of our culture or are forgotten elements of previous cultures are being blocked for no reason other than corporate greed. At the very least, copyright should expire if the work is not being produced after a set time period (10-20 years seems reasonable). Ideally, everything should fall into the public domain after a set period of time (half a lifetime or so should be sufficient). Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming a cultureless people at the mercy of corporate copyright holders (if we aren't already).

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Transwarp Conduit]

At the very least, copyright should expire if the work is not being produced after a set time period (10-20 years seems reasonable).

In other words, give the concept of "abandonware" a legal, clearly-defined standing? Now that's an idea worth pursuing, especially if the terms were codified in such a way as to take into account the different rates at which different works become "obsolete." (For example, I think a 20-year "out of print" period is about right for books, movies, music, etc., while I think a 5-year period would be more appropriate for computer software.)

I wouldn't say that an "abandoned" work should become entirely public-domain right away, though. This could raise the spectre of a publishing house (movie studio, record label, etc.) only putting out a single printing of a work, waiting long enough for the abandonware term to expire, then "re-issuing" it without having to pay the author any further royalties. (This would, for example, allow MGM to drag their heels on a reissue of Nelvana's "Rock and Rule" for a couple more years, then issue it as soon as it becomes "abandoned" without paying Nelvana a dime.)

I would suggest, rather, than when a work becomes "abandonware", the copyright holder only loses the right to control non-profit copying and distribution of the work. Thus, if MGM (to refer to the example above) is still dragging their heels on a Rock & Rule DVD release after 2003, under my proposed "abandonware" scheme I could legally make DVD-R copies from my laserdisc and give them away; such copying would only be illegal if I tried to make a profit off of it. It would also, in the case of Project Gutenberg, allow for the not-for-profit digitizing and distribution of those out-of-print books, but would allow the original author to keep his right to sue anyone who tried to plagiarize his work and claim it as their own.

Seems like a fair balance to me... what do you think?

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Hard_Code]

And imagine, for the last decade or so, we have had the ability to basically archive *everything* of cultural value that crosses the net. In the future, even more things will be digital. If we don't reform copyright, copyright holders will not only be able to snuff out *new* creativity...they will be able to completely destroy rich records of history. Imagine if the entire contents of usenet were just thrown away or "lost" to history. What an absolute shame.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[avandesande]

This is actually purposeful. They would rather that you spend your money on 'new' things than on old things that will do just as well.
And what about all the scientific journals mouldering away in university libraries? Woulden't they be much more useful if they were available on the web?

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[rodgerd]

Unfortunately, publishers already have experience in defeating any abandonware type clause; you will find (if you like books by older authors) that many, many volumes in the 50s and 60s, for example, are listed as in-print, but unobtainable in practise; this is because it used to be common that book publishers would sign an exclusive license with a writer with a proviso that the license would expire if the publisher allowed a work to go out of print, so that the author could negotiate with another publisher.

Fair enough, right?

In practise, though, publishers claim books are in print; perhaps they even fulfill one or two orders per year, but they are not actually printing those books - they may have a small stockpile somewhere. Unfortunately, it's virtually impossible for the author to prove this is just a ploy, and it's also impossible for fans of the author to get the damn books.

Much the same thing would happen under the abandonware clause - publishers would make it prohibitively hard to get work they didn't feel like releasing, but claim it was still technically being published.

Also, one other weakness in this: much of the old work is available of media which is scarce; it's unlikely such a provision would have much force if, for example, you wanted a movie but the publisher refused to release the only remaining prints (you're welcome to the copyright, you just can't get a copy).

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Happy Monkey]

In practise, though, publishers claim books are in print; perhaps they even fulfill one or two orders per year, but they are not actually printing those books - they may have a small stockpile somewhere. Unfortunately, it's virtually impossible for the author to prove this is just a ploy, and it's also impossible for fans of the author to get the damn books.

In this digital age, that shouldn't be a problem - a product (book, movie, software) should be considered out of print if an individual customer can't order it from the publisher or a distributor in some format at or below the original price, adjusted for inflation. When a company decides they no longer wants to print paper books/box art/manuals, they then should be required to provide downloads or bare-bones CD/DVDs, or allow copyright to lapse.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Oily Tuna]

Ie. when the original author stops using their right to copy, the right to copy transfers to the public.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[re-geeked]

I'd take it one step further. The studios recognize that our mass culture is made up almost exclusively of _their_ property -- they've worked hard to make this the case, and they intend to keep it that way.

Fortunately for the studios, mass culture includes political discourse, and they have also worked hard to own that, with the coup-de-grace being buying up all the broadcasters.

So the chance of our current political culture waking up to the harms of this monopolization is about nil.

I agree with Lessig's call to arms, but I think we need to be more creative in the laws _we_ ask for. For example:

Stop and reverse consolidation of broadcast rights. Probably hand out more frequencies, revoke/expire some licenses, limit the rights more, and insist that broadcasters NOT produce content and NOT sell political access. This goes for the new networks (cable, satellite, wireless, DSL) as well as the old.

Stop the practice of work-for-hire. If artists own copyrights, there won't be the unified, overpowering hoarding of cultural work there is today.

Recognize that we now have *less* of a need to give economic assistance (in the form of copyright) to allow publishing. The sheer noise of Usenet and weblogs should be proof enough of that. Limit copyright *more* than its original provisions.

We need to get creative, and go on the offensive. When people see that the Internet changes the old balance, they feel a need to do something (hence Hatch feeling snookered that DMCA would help restore sanity, when really it made things worse.) Let's give them something positive to chew on.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[DanielRavenNest]

The way to deal with the issue of publishers
keeping rights to an item forever is to charge a significant renewal fee to keep a copyright
in force, perhaps $500 every 5 years. Allow
an initial 15 year term so that small authors
and publishers can get some income, but then
require the renewal fee after that. At a
reasonable limit (like 30 years), no more
renewals.

A more radical approach would be to have
copyright owners self-assess the value of their
work at renewal time, with the fee pegged at
a fraction (like 5%) of the self-assessed value.
The catch is anyone can buy the copyright at
the self-assessed value.

That way the Disney's of the world can keep
their copyrights, but they'll have to pay
to keep that right.

Daniel

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[bgspence]

Most copyrights of any value are probably not owned by the authors. Wouldn't it be nice if copyright renewal was nontransferable. If only the original author could renew, the Sonys et all would need to renegotiate with the original creators if they wanted to keep control. It might inhibit culture, but at least creators of works of value would be rewarded again and again and again.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Secret Coward]

and insist that broadcasters NOT produce content and NOT sell political access.

I have a big problem with outlawing speech, even if it's from big, bad corporate liars. I would prefer a competitive solution, such as government-run media. In particular, I would like an independent fourth branch of government.

I envision a set of seven or so seperate news agencies. At election time, the people would vote for an organization (church, trade group, etc) that they trust their vote to. That organization would then cast its votes for a particular media director. The seven most popular directors would each run one news agency. With seven agencies, minority view points would certainly be published. Also, each agency should have exactly the same budget, codified in a constitutional ammendment (median national income * 2000 or something like that). Finally, everything the agencies publish should go directly into the public domain.

But I'm dreaming. Congress would never go for this. It would cost a fortune, and it would have to overcome the stigma of being state sponsered media.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Faux_Pseudo]

Sorry Daniel, but this is a terrible idea. I am an artist. Not an Artist as in someone whom makes money off their work but a person who occasionally puts pen to paper and creates something that has value. I copyright each one of these drawings so that if someone finds one and decides they want to use it for the cover of their new CD or book or who knows what that they have to find me and I can get credit or money or both because they liked what they saw.

Copyright was created by Tomas Jefferson to help the little guy like me. What you would have done would cause the big corporations to have total control because I could not afford the $100 a year to sustain my write to determine what happens to my work. Or worse yet on your second option I undervalue the work and then I get sued by some government agency for not properly estimating the value of something that I had no idea would sell at all.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit the nail on the head with the comment about tricks publishers pull with books that are out of print. Addison Wesley still calls my book in print even though I can't even buy it from them. If I can ever convince them to call it out of print, then I have the right to release it on my own. An open-source HTML book might be a good thing.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[re-geeked]

All I'm saying is that a broadcasting company would be a public utility whose job is to be the conduit for programming. Is it too much to ask a corporate entity that has been created for the purpose of broadcasting to not use that right for undue influence?

Government-sponsored or approved or even elected press will never have the accountability of a free, private-sector press.

The problem is that although there's no limit to the number of newspapers, websites, etc, there sure is a limit to the number of frequencies on which one can legally broadcast -- and since radio and tv have about wiped newspapers off the map in terms of national political influence, those limits on who can broadcast can be abused, and are being abused. I'm suggesting that the public airwaves return to being a neutral forum.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[Secret Coward]

I'm suggesting that the public airwaves return to being a neutral forum.

I think that's as hopeless as expecting the presidency to remain a neutral position. If something can be exploited, somebody will exploit it. This is why we have three branches of government, they provide checks and balances on each other.

Government-sponsored or approved or even elected press will never have the accountability of a free, private-sector press.

I don't think that an elected media would necessarily be better than private media. However, I believe a combination of the two is much better than either one alone.

Who are the major television networks accountable to? Their shareholders and customers (advertisers). They have a conflict of interest when it comes to issues that effect their bottom line. As far as viewers are concerned, the networks need to maintain just enough credibility and sensationalism to keep people watching.

On the other hand, an elected media would have to cover issues that voters, trade groups, etc are truely concerned about. An elected media would have the independence to question what the corporate sponsered media report.

Consider globalization protests. The corporate media provide shallow reports of protesters getting pounded by the police. An elected media would be obligated to provide more in-depth coverage of why people are protesting in the first place. Corporate media reported that the DMCA would bring copyright into the 21st century. Elected media could have reported that the DMCA was corporate welfare.

Come election day, such diverse reporting would allow voters to make more informed opinions. An informed public is good for democracy and good for capitalism.

Re:Indefinite copyright destroys culture

[hughk]

What happens about the definition of 'in-print'? If the book is not available or deliverable in a reasobale period, then shouldn't the publisher's right automatically fail?

One issue here is that it is now quite easy for the publisher to use Print-On-Demand technology to russle up a couple of copies. Sure, it might be printable at a loss, but that may be good for the retention of copyright.

So the best thing would be to force the defintion of 'in-print' by a court case.

Complaints about Slashdot

[adamy]

I find it interesting to hear him call for things like a neutral commons, and yet criticize the Slashdot audience for not working together for political ends. Slashdot is a forum, and as such, courts dissenting views. If the Slashdot audience was able to unite and force a politician to support a particular view, we would be nothing but a mob, swayed by whomever could give the best speech.

Slashdot's audience is very non-monolithic. While the postings are usually anit-microsoft, obviously some people who are very pro-microsoft read on a regular basis, and feel compelled to post. Granted that good chunk of people wil post an opposing view to anything just to still debate. But this is a place for people to voice differeing opinions.

Not everyone that reads Slashdot is tech savvy, and those that are understand best the portions of technology that they use: I am a programmer, and not a very good system administrator. I understand business software a hell of a lot better than I understand embedded programming.

I enjoy the debates on Slashdot. I enjoy learning an opposing point of view to somthing I've held as obvious, and find out that there is a hell of alot more on Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in my philosophy [appologies to the Bard]

I appreciate the post, and the fact that he answered the questions. And I generally agreed with his point of view. But Slashdot is not a political party.

Re:Complaints about Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting to hear him call for things like a neutral commons, and yet criticize the Slashdot audience for not working together for political ends. Slashdot is a forum, and as such, courts dissenting views. If the Slashdot audience was able to unite and force a politician to support a particular view, we would be nothing but a mob, swayed by whomever could give the best speech.

The problem isn't that Slashdotters don't work together. It's that they carry on these grand debates in a forum that no politician, lawyer, or judge gives a shit about. It's all sound and fury signifying nothing. I've seen some stunning pieces of prose here and have said to myself "yes, this is exactly right; why don't our elected officials get it?" It's because nobody says these things to them. What is it with people who spend all this time thinking and writing about these issues but can't be bothered to print up their words, slap a stamp on them and mail them to their congressman or newspaper editor? What is it with people who say they're outraged at how the entertainment industry is stomping on fair use, but then decide that buying Phantom Menace DVDs or GameCubes is a better use of their disposable income than helping the EFF fight the good fight?

Re:Complaints about Slashdot

[benedict]

He didn't say that Slashdot shouldn't brook dissent.

He said that the Slashdot community, or the apparent
majority thereof who are in favor of intellectual
property reform, ought to get off our asses and do
something about it.

Re:Complaints about Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. That, and (from the howard roark dig) Slashdot debates tend to drift off into ideological gum yapping, missing the greater point.

Of course, that's for a few reasons: 1) Slashdot is filled with ideolistic college kids that don't know squat about the real world and think CDs are both necessary and expensive. They are also young enough to not have a clear memory of not having the Internet. 2) Slashdotters did not build "an architecture of value" -- they are for the most part just saavy users of such.

And finally 3) People here bit on too many trolls, so conversations always steer off into whether Dick Stallman is a communist or not, and miss the point at hand.

Re:Complaints about Slashdot

[Tony-A]

I don't think it was criticism. More like Diogenes looking for an honest man. Try to find an honest politician. Try to find one who knows what he's talking about. And they do mean well. Catch a load of CSPAN sometime.

I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

But Slashdot is not a political party.
Right. If we were, we would no longer get it.
Great post, BTW.

Re:Complaints about Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

By getting into endless arguments, we ourselves become jaded. I tire of the endless "fair use" arguments and debates that linger on and on in here, obviously, there's not much point talking about "fair use" when it's apparent that no minds are going to be changed. Even when we're arguing about the topics, we're still preaching to the choir, folks.

And becoming jaded makes me lazy. Slashdot is really a lot like usenet these days -- So many crappy posts and only a gem or two that really opens your eyes. I actually tire of the Intellectual Property stories on slashdot. We're still trying to nail down whether "Fair Use" is really a "right" of the public or not. And if the minority really is right and it really *is* a right, we're allowing it to slowly slip away while doing nothing but arguing whether or not it deserves protection.

What percentage of slashdot readership hate the DMCA? What percentage hate the SSSCA? What percentage want to preserve as much "fair use" as much as possible? Just because the minority opposition has a loud voice, doesn't mean that the majority could be represented by some sort of movement.

Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Telex4]

I think he was spot on when he said that there are too many very intelligent, technically minded people on Slashdot who either don't think about, or actively shirk, essential issues of freedom and politics surrounding technology.

Take the way a lot of people dismiss the Free Software Foundation, for example, believing that GNU/Linux, Slashdot and other great "programs" could have been created without the ethic and philosophy behind Free Software. Anybody who talks about freedom gets called a commie and is modded down by ignaramuses who are more interested in the fine details of mallocing than the yare in being able to malloc without being sued to hell for it.

People also bitch a lot about cryptography, the DCMA, Skylarov, etc. but what do you all do about it? And you dismiss those anti-globalisation, feminism, vegan, anti-war etc. protesters out on the street at least *voicing* their concerns, however valid they may be.

It's time Slashdotters took pen to their concerns and started writing to local papers, and organising local groups to demonstrate against these problems we face. Otherwise we might as well fiddle with code while Rome burns.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time Slashdotters took pen to their concerns and started writing to local papers

Dear Appleton Times (incorporating Springfield Gazette),

FIRST POST!!!!!

Yours,

Slashdot

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

Commie!

Commie! You are such a commie! I can't believe how commie-like you are, you freakin' commie!

;-)

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Arandir]

I think GNU is half the problem. The GPL is based entirely on copyright law. The more people want to enforce the GPL, the more current copyright law gets enforced. Any successful suit that defends the GPL will also defend the current copyright model. It's rather like a bunch of hippies setting up a commune because "land should be free", yet hauling trespassers into court.

If you think copyright is wrong, or that the current implementation of it is severly corrupt, then it behooves you to use the least restrictive license available. The GPL is a long ways away from being the least restrictive license. The GPL makes sense for a lot of projects, but it is the wrong license to use for undermining or weakening the current copyright situation. For that the MIT and BSD licenses are much more suitable. Heck, we ought to be lobbying for laws to make it easier to place your works into the public domain, and then doing so.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Telex4]

Why do you say those things about the GPL? If anything it is even better than the BSD and MIT lisences, in the way that you suggest. It uses the idea of copyright to let people grant the public *total* use of his/her work... putting it right out into the communes, and preventing anybody from ever taking that way. That's a lot better than the BSD liscence, IMO.

You need a lisence enforceable by law otherwise we're all buggered. And the GPL is about as big a hack on the law as you could manage.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[clone304]

The GPL is not based on the "current" copyright model. It is in fact based on the reality that there is a copyright model. Whether it is the copyright law of the framers or the copyright law of the modern corporation, the GPL still takes advantage of that reality to create a community trust software pool. What makes the GPL work is the fact that it does not allow anyone to steal the work of the community and sell it back to that same community at a profit. The BSD type license does allow that to happen. If every piece of GPL software was switched to a BSD license, then, slowly but surely, as individuals or profit-based enterprises made enhancements to that code, the new code will be taken from the community though it is based in large part on code written and owned by the community. As this theft of the commons occurs, it will be necessary for you to pay for closed source software to stay current with technological advances. Or you will have to write the new code yourself.

The GPL is the gaurdian of the community's software pool. The GPL is a deal. If you want to leverage someone else's work to make yours easier, then you have to allow others to leverage your work. If you don't like the deal, then you can code it your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!

End of fucking story.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the way a lot of people dismiss the Free Software Foundation, for example, believing that GNU/Linux, Slashdot and other great "programs" could have been created without the ethic and philosophy behind Free Software.

But the GNU tools & Linux were created without the ethic and philosophy behind Free Software (as defined by Stallman). The programs you speak of are merely copies of existing proprietary software.

Moderators: Mod this (-5, inconvenient fact)

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Arandir]

It uses the idea of copyright to let people grant the public *total* use of his/her work... putting it right out into the communes, and preventing anybody from ever taking that way.

A noble cause. But one that has the very same premise as does copyright: he who writes the code gets to control the code. The GPL is about control. It is about forcing people to distribute derivations under the same license, or not distribute at all. It's about requiring the source code be available at all times, or no distribution. It's about mandating that a political screed gets distributed with each and every copy of the software. Etc., etc. It's not a bad thing, in itself, but it's hardly a revolutionary new model of intellectual property. It's rather like someone purchasing a plot of land, planting a park on it, and posting a sign saying that all the children in the neighborhood are free to use it provided they clean up after themselves. A wonderful gesture, but it in no way undermines the framework of trespass laws.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Arandir]

the new code will be taken from the community though it is based in large part on code written and owned by the community.

Who gets to decide what the community is? Does it consist of people who don't contribute back modifications? If not, someone decides who that community is. That person is analogous to the medieval lord (totalitarian aristocrat) who legally owns the "village commons".

The only software that the "community" owns is public domain software. Everything else is owned by the copyright holder. That may be an individual, a group such as the FSF, or a corporation such as Redhat. Since they set the rules under which I can distribute the software, they are the owners.

As this theft of the commons occurs...

An oxymoron. You can only steal what you do not own. If the commons is owned by everyone, then what is stolen is the already the thief's property. If it is owned by no one, then there is no property to steal.

If you don't like the deal, then you can code it your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!

Speaking of greed, why are you so insistant on a license that requires all modifications come back to you? Or to put it another way, if you don't like the fact that the MIT license does not require people to give you their modifications, then you can go code them your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[clone304]

You're right, except that the idea of using copyright to entrust a work to the public domain undermines the selfish mentality that drives copyright hoarding. It does make a statement. Whether you choose to receive it or not.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[cduffy]

Yes, the GPL is based on copyright law... but I don't see how that's so wrong. Since when was copyright (excluding the DMCA and the unreasonable duration) a Bad Thing?

That is to say, if you think only specific features of copyright are so corrupt, it does indeed behoove one to avoid use of those features -- not copyright altogether.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Winged Cat]

I can only speak for myself, but...it's not apathy for me. I vote. I occasionally write to my Representative and Senator. I've filed comments in a few of the "request for public comment" bits mentioned above.

And, every single time, I've seen every point I tried to make utterly ignored, in favor of enough money from the entertainment barons to buy enough votes (through ads, pork projects, films and TV shows to drive points home) to make more people vote for the incumbent anyway.

When every single attempt at activism results in such poor results, I must conclude, as I suspect many others have on even less evidence, that my time is wasted in such endeavors. I therefore instead spend my time in other pursuits, in the hopes of creating a better place and moving there before The Powers That Be get around to destroying my life for daring not to be another mindless consumer, as they seem so intent on doing to so many people. It will take many years, perhaps a few decades, to set up said better place, but things aren't that bad yet...

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Telex4]

The types of activism you cite are all solitary acts. You are quite right - no individual can stand up to the corporations in capitalism. But groups can, and so the best way to tackle any problem is to seek out people who think similarly to you, form a group, and campaign and recruit as a group. Over time you'd hook up with loads of other groups, and if it's an issue as global as copyright and IP, you'd probably become part of something rather huge.

Instead you sit and write a few letters then give up.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Telex4]

The problem I see with your idea of a "commons", which I find idealogically appealing, is that the freedom & commons side would just fizzle out.

Case scenario: RedHat takes Linux and copyrights it for themselves, then RedHat sells wildly and the company start to dominate the market, because they get more revenue than before. Perhaps a few other proprietary versions come through, but it's still a market of propiretary software.

Because the public flock to household brands, proprietary Linux would dominate and the whole point of the exercise, to get people using Free Software, would be squashed. Look at how the press see Linux as it is - a stable competitor to Windows. How many articles have you seen in the mainstream press espousing the philosophy of Free Software? Now imagine if Free Software was insignificant as compared to proprietary Linux. It'd never get a mention. End of story.

RMS was right when he said copyright is the power of the coder over the user. You're right in saying "copyleft" (silly term) is the power of the coder over future coders. The commons is in effect the power of the corporation over the commons. Personally I'd opt for the "copyleft" solution, and put up with the restrictions in future coders.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[clone304]

>Who gets to decide what the community is? Does it consist of people who don't contribute back modifications? If not, someone decides who that community is. That person is analogous to the medieval lord (totalitarian aristocrat) who legally owns the "village commons".

With the GPL, the author (yes, under copyright law) decides who the community is. By the terms of the GPL, that community is everyone who chooses to be a part of it. Nobody is excluded.

> The only software that the "community" owns is public domain software. Everything else is owned by the copyright holder. That may be an individual, a group such as the FSF, or a corporation such as Redhat. Since they set the rules under which I can distribute the software, they are the owners.

Wrong. Public domain software can be slightly modified and re-released in a closed-source fashion. The GPL is not necessarily perfect, but, for the most part, accomplishes what the BSD license and Public Domain software cannot.

Ownership of the code is really not the issue. Under copyright law, all code is owned by someone, and they decide who can use it and under what terms. When the owner chooses the GPL as a license, he makes a gift of his "property" to the community and as copyright holder establishes himself as the gaurdian of this gift. Red Hat or the FSF can also serve as the gaurdian. This is only an issue if the owner has made modifications to the code and wants to put that under a different license. As copyright holder they can do that, but they still cannot take back the original GPL'd code.

> An oxymoron. You can only steal what you do not own. If the commons is owned by everyone, then what is stolen is the already the thief's property. If it is owned by no one, then there is no property to steal

Wrong again. You can steal a piece, or all, of the commons. It does not belong to "nobody" it belongs to everybody. You can steal a part of a physical commons by putting up barbed wire fences around "your" piece of it and shooting anyone who climbs through the fence. The GPL merely says that you cannot put up fences on this land, even if you work long and hard to keep that piece of it beautiful.

> Speaking of greed, why are you so insistant on a license that requires all modifications come back to you? Or to put it another way, if you don't like the fact that the MIT license does not require people to give you their modifications, then you can go code them your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!

I think you misunderstand. And I wasn't attacking you personally. Forgive me. I'm not insisting that anybody put their code under the GPL. It's not about the code coming back to "me". I am expressing why I would choose to put MY code under the GPL. Since I do value giving away my code so that others may benefit, I choose the GPL in order to safegaurd that gift. I choose the GPL in order to block the greed of others. The deal is that if you want to take advantage of my code, to avoid having to do the work that I already did, then you can do the same for others. If you don't think that's a fair trade, then don't take the deal.

Sure the MIT license is fine. But I wouldn't use it under most circumstances, because it would annoy me to see Microsoft, or anybody for that matter, take my code and make a fat wad of cash off of closing the source code. That would just piss me off. I guess those who choose that license are just bigger people than I. What can I say, I'm weak.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Winged Cat]

Some were solo. Some were part of a group. Some were coordinated by the EFF, and if that's not a "large group" on our side, then what is?

So far, every such effort I've been involved with came to naught.

How much effort must one waste at a futile thing, before one is allowed to give up and try a different approach that might work? The answer is far less than "infinite", yet I doubt I could prove to your satisfaction that my efforts were in vain with anything less than total devotion of my every waking moment to this particular cause. Again, I can only speak for myself - perhaps others may find ways that they can suceed at such efforts - but I do decide my own actions.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Arandir]

One of the biggest proprietary software houses in the world once owned FreeBSD. Yet despite its unrestricted license, Windriver did not proprietarize it. The were smart enough to know that it would have been *impossible*. BSD/OS was proprietary for years (still is), yet it has done nothing to harm FreeBSD. On the contrary, it actually led a lot of people to its free counterpart.

Because the public flock to household brands, proprietary Linux would dominate and the whole point of the exercise, to get people using Free Software, would be squashed.

If that's the whole point, then by all means slap down a list of Thou Shalt Nots all over the code. Heck, you might even try to get a law passed forcing consumers to only use Free Software. But somehow I don't think that's the goal of most Free Software developers, even most of those using the GPL.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Arandir]

With the GPL, the author (yes, under copyright law) decides who the community is. By the terms of the GPL, that community is everyone who chooses to be a part of it. Nobody is excluded.

That's not a community, that's a club. In a real world community of brick, mortor and wood, you see that the members are never of one mind. They all belong to different political parties, churches, organizations, schools, etc. Only in a club do you find the kind of same-mindedness that you find in the Free Software Movement. There are elements of community there, but it's mostly like a club.

Wrong. Public domain software can be slightly modified and re-released in a closed-source fashion.

Double Wrong. I can proprietarize one particular version of a public domain work, but I can't take the work itself out the public domain. It's legally impossible. Otherwise I could just go grab Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" and start demanding royalties every Christmas. Once in the public domain, always in the public domain.

It's sort of like a village commons where no matter how many fences you put up, there's just as much land as before.

I think you misunderstand. And I wasn't attacking you personally.

My mistake.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[mrjohnson]

Those programs would never have gained the broad-based community support that they enjoy now because without the ethical standards of the FSF and the GPL.

Face it, law and ethics are important. Slashdot and the community the frequents it would be nothing without these ideals. Ever visited a Microsoft forum? Not a happy place, filled with lots and lots of people posting problems and only paid Microsoft employees posting answers. There is no, or very little, community spirit.

The software and it's creation is not the most important thing. The community is most important, and this was what Stallman sought to reproduce when he quit his MIT job. And what best creates that community is a strong system of ethics, a culture if you will. Go read the Cathedral and the Bazaar again -- you'll see ESR defining the hacker community. Read his recent work -- you'll see ESR defending the community standards and reaching out to newbies, not teaching courses on how to best copy existing closed-source work.

In short, you missed the point. The AC was asking you to give a damn, and all you can do is bicker about an insignificant fact.

- Mike Johnson

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

Repealing all copyright laws would not duplicate the achievements of the GPL, because there would be nothing stopping me from releasing a binary-only version of my software. Sure, you could copy and use it freely; you could even decompile it. But you couldn't get the source code of my modifications unless I chose to release them.

RMS doesn't want freedom from copyright, which would be satisfied by repealing all copyright laws. He wants forced communalization of source code, which requires the use of government force.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Malcontent]

Many people have made proprietary a ton of BSD code. Sun, MS, Apple immediately come to mind. Has that hurt BSD? Though to say. It is fair to say that the free/open/netBSD operating systems are no where nearly popular as linux is. In a very real sense BSD is dying. I know the code will always be out there but nobody will be using it. In the marketplace of ideas more developers are choosing GPL if for no other reason then to prevent corporations from profiting from their code. To me that's a pretty compelling reason. I would be disgusted with the idea of working for a corporation without compensation. When you release code under the BSD license that's exactly what you are doing. I know many people don't mind coding for corporations for free but it makes me wonder. They would not clean toilets at MS for free, they would not work in the Sun mailroom for free yet they don't mind coding for them free.
I guess it takes all kinds of people.

Re:Apathetic "damn those commies" Slashdotters

[Malcontent]

"That's not a community, that's a club"

Sez you. First of all dissemination of code has no analogy in the brick and mortar world. You analogy is invalid to start with. Second of all even in your analogy you contradict yourself. In a church every body believes in the same god and the same interpretation of the bible, all organizations are of like minded people weather they are republicans or earth firsters. Lastly there is no real difference between a community and club.

As for the rest of your comments I think the original author did a good job of explaining it. You are under no obligation to join this community. The community rejects nobody who is willing to join. The problem is that you don't like this community, you reject their values, you reject their methods.
Fine go join a different community but for gods sake shut up about it. I have read all your posts on this thread and you keep pointing your finger and whining as if somehow the existance of this community hampers in some way. It does not. You are free to write your own code and do whatever you want with it. You are not entitled to other people's code unless you abide by their wishes. Why is this so hard to understand?

Wow, long but...

[cavemanf16]

"If you think it [file sharing programs] should not be legal, what remedies should the law consider, since these systems can have significant non-infringing uses as well?

LL:

I support these technologies. More importantly, I support the right of innovators to develop these technologies. But I don't support copyright violations using these technologies.

You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime. The law targets illegal uses of technologies, not the technologies - at least where there is a legitimate and legal use of that technology. Yet because of our extremism when it comes to copyright law, we ban technologies that threaten copyright interests whether or not they have legitimate, independent uses."

How insightful. The line, however, gets blurred when I say that a legitimate useage constitutes sharing copyrighted works for free because it means I have access to more works that I would not otherwise have access to which I could then be making MORE purchases of copyrighted material for full-quality versions (which I do believe is true in most mp3/online digital works cases), versus someone who finds this to be the exact copyright violation that is harmful to a company or individual.

Although I did not ask a question last time, my question now would be, how do we draw the line? I'm not going to bend on my values, and the RIAA sure as hell won't bend on theirs, so who is right? Those who scream the loudest? If that is the case, then I have sorely been far too quiet for far too long already.

Re:Wow, long but...

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the important distinction here is between copyright law and good business sence.

The argument you are making is a possible business reason for copyright holders to waive their rights to limit distribution, in an attempt to increase future or associated sales. It doesn't provide any grounds for modifying copyright law.

I agree completely with what lessig said on this issue - Authors must have the ability to copyright their works, and the legal framework to enforce those copyrights.

Use of napster etal to break copyright laws is wrong - but i believe the record companies should have the forsight to adjust to alternative business models which might allow napster type shareing of copyrighted works.

pathetically apolitical?

[afidel]

Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

We are apolitical because we refuse to sink to that level. I personally believe that the paper I write my letters on should count just as much as the paper that the lobbiest's money is printed on. But alas this is not so, and consequently I refuse to become a political activist. I do not have the time or money to fight the corporations that are raping our system on a playingfield of their choosing. Until true campaign finance reform is enacted there will only be two groups who's voices are heard in Washington, the extreme groups who sway enough voters to matter to the politico's, and the coroporations with who's money they can buy the great uncaring masses. While I think it is pathetic that less than 1/3 of the REGISTERED voters(nevermind that less than half of people of legal age are registered) turned out for the last local election, I am beginning to understand. People in other countries die every day for the right to vote, yet with greed and corruption the corporations and special interests have taken away our spirit to vote.

Re:pathetically apolitical?

[lunaman]

...But alas this is not so, and consequently I refuse to become a political activist. I do not have the time or money to fight the corporations that are raping our system on a playingfield of their choosing. Until true campaign finance reform is enacted there will only be two groups who's voices are heard in Washington, the extreme groups who sway enough voters to matter to the politico's, and the coroporations with who's money they can buy the great uncaring masses.

Catch 22.

Until we "fight the corporations that are raping our system", there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that any meaningful campaign finance reform will be enacted.

Choose or lose. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Re:pathetically apolitical?

[Schrodinger's Mouse]

Just how, exactly, do you intend to achieve campaign finance reform if you are unwilling to participate in the political process??? Do you expect Trent Lott to wake up one morning and say, "Gosh, I've been betraying all those people who didn't vote for me by taking all of that money from corporations and PACs. Today I think I'll fix that so that everyone has equal voice."?

Hate to remind you, but if you can vote but don't, politicians don't give a flying f*ck about you. They're more interested in those that do vote. And since those are primarily senior citizens and the Christian Right, we get overreaching protection for Social Security and <pulling out the big guns> JOHN ASHCROFT.

Fer cryin' out loud, man, WAKE UP!

Re:pathetically apolitical?

[afidel]

I DO vote, I just don't bother to write my congresscritters nearly as much as I would If I thought it might change anything. Like I said I think it's sad that people don't vote, but I am beginning to understand their apathy. In fact I haven't missed an election since I became eligable to vote, 9 days before the 96 presidential election.

Re:pathetically apolitical?

[Schrodinger's Mouse]

Ah...... that changes things then. I was posting under the impression that you were being a hypocritical whiny nonvoter. You are none of those things (though, if you vote, whining is your right). Sorry.

Just for the record, I voted in my first election 2 weeks after my eighteenth birthday, and have only missed one since (I moved and was ineligible, but am now).

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[scheming daemons]

If a vacancy did come during this President's term, you would definitely not get Lawrence Lessig appointed.

Probably would be some ex Enron lawyer that Dubya owed a favor to.

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't see anyone 'appointed' -- because they're not appointed. They president nominates someone, and the senate confirms/denies them.

Re:The source

[raincrow]

>Dr. Seuss's alter ego?

Lawrence Lessig
Theodore Geisel

I suppose one could get the names confused. If you were squinting. While reading in the dark. And you'd been drinking.

Wow, a lawyer who gets it

[Pinball Wizard]

(1) how the architecture of the Internet built a set of values,
(2) how those values are fundamentally linked to the most important freedoms in our tradition, and
(3) how changes in that architecture of the net could undermine those values.

This needs to be conveyed loud and clear to every one of our legislators. As an article posted previously today stated, content providers want to take away general purpose computers and replace them with specialized devices. We must not let them!

Re:Wow, a lawyer who gets it

[rossjudson]

You son of a bitch. Man, do you ever get it. I wish this could be modded higher than it is. Let me repeat:

they want to take away our general purpose devices, and replace them with specialized devices.

They want to take away our creation devices, and replace them with things that can't/won't. Talk about the ultimate reduction in speech! Think of all the speech/creativity/economic activity that has been produced by general computation. And kiss it goodbye.

That, my friends, is why a contribution to the EFF might just be in your best interest.

Re:Wow, a lawyer who gets it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right on the mark. The sad thing is that they've repeatedly tried to sell special purpose "media consumption terminals" to the public and failed everytime. (For example the basis for investments in cable internet were proprietary interactive television systems that never caught on.)

So what do they do? They plan to undermine the most successful device in consumer electronic history -- the personal computer -- by globbing it with DRM tollbooths.

However, by ignoring the central idea of personal computing -- that the user controls his/her data on an open architecture system -- they will ultimately fail, even if they have to destroy the PC industry to prove their point. Still, this recession is not going to be pretty for technology users.

Not a "Slashdot Party"

[Telex4]

He wasn't espousing a political party containing eveyr Slashdotter. One of the worst features of the American and British political systems at the moment is that they only recognise large, monolithic parties. The many interest groups that exist ge tsidelines - that's why the all the groups who have a problem with the economics & politics of today have grouped under the "anti-globalisation" umbrella, whether they're strictly anti-globalisation or not.

Back to the point though, Slashdotters could easily start by lettering MPs, Congressman, MEPs etc to voice their concerns. Pro-Microsoft Slashdotters can urge their representatives to drop proceedings. Anti-DMCS Slashdotters can urge them to re-structure the digital-law travesty. Even if the Slashdot audience divided into about 20 or 30 interest groups, it would still provide a useful and effective lobby.

As Lawrence pointed out, posting comments to Slashdot may give eveyrone here a great chance for debate, but it's not going to achieve any more than that in the long run.

Re:Not a "Slashdot Party"

[wfrp01]

Slashdotters could easily start by lettering MPs, Congressman, MEPs etc to voice their concerns.

They do.

Anyone who attempts to profile a typical "slashdotter" is doomed to fail miserably. As with any group with a membership greater than one, there will always be many points of view. This should go without saying. Nevertheless, when luminaries such as Lawrence start making such generalizations, it's worth taking the time to overstate the obvious.

But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

And just what does the high and mighty honorable Lessig think he's doing cavorting with the unwashed masses? Here's a clue, Larry: if it weren't for us, you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. You think all of your bright ideas enter your dreams from the ether? There's a lot to be desired of Slashdot. And of Slashdotters, myself included. But if you're going to tell me that the "quibbles" on Slashdot are irrelevant, I'm going to tell you to pull your head out of your ass. These discussions, prosaic as they may be, are read by thousands. Like the lowly cattle we are, we regurgitate our food, chew on it some more, and swallow. And repeat.

Is your mode of operation any different? I think not. The only difference is one of specialization. So before you condescend to the audience who's point of view you deign to represent, get a little humility. Or go suck eggs.

Non-Americans Response?

[Mister_IQ]

As a Canadian, and a Slashdot lurker, I must say that I feel rather strange about this whole issue.

I feel rather like I'm standing watching through the keyhole as my fate is being argued and decided by people that I don't know.

I have less-than-zero say in the American system, yet the American system will essentially be deciding what's "right" for me and the rest of the world. (Foreign coders being held for work they did in foreign countries that breaks American law...)

My first thought when I read the article was "So, you have lots of critique of our sloth, but very little specific direction to get us off our butts". My second thought was "And if he DID give suggestions, they would most likely be directed at the American government (like writing congressmen, etc) and therefore essentially useless for me."

Anyone out there feel the same? What can I do as a non-American? Yes, I can give to the EFF, and yes, I can write to my own government, but let's be honest: The next time Chretien is in town, Dubya ain't gonna be asking him his country's stand on Copyright Law...

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to worry - Canadians can't think for themselves. All they are capable of doing on their own is clubbing baby seals.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's no much we Canadians can do...

But the European Union will be becoming an increasingly economic power and should be able to stand up to the States, so Europeans should write to whoever...

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Galvatron]

It's important to recognize that Skylarov's company was selling to Americans, that's how he got into trouble. As long as his product had remained exclusively Russian, he would have been fine.

Obviously, it was a bad arrest, and in violation of all kinds of things, but it was still a bit removed from your claim that the American government will dictate to the world.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only thing they do!

I believe the national past-time is called "Making infinately better beer than the piss you Yankees try to pass off".

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Canadians certainly don't have dictionaries. "infinately", eh? Guess you don't have to have an intimate grasp of the English language to club seals...

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[cgreuter]

>As a Canadian, and a Slashdot lurker, I must say that I feel rather
>strange about this whole issue.

Me too.

>Anyone out there feel the same? What can I do as a non-American? Yes,
>I can give to the EFF, and yes, I can write to my own government, but
>let's be honest: The next time Chretien is in town, Dubya ain't gonna
>be asking him his country's stand on Copyright Law...

If everyone in the country starts writing him about how important
copyright law is to them, he certainly will.

Canada is still its own country and still has its own laws.
Yes, the US has far too much influence on us, but there's always the
option of just staying out of the US. I think that as Canadians, it
is our duty to make sure our country stays free.

In other words, "Think Globally, Act Locally."

Consider: if Canada keeps its laws relatively sane while the US does
not, it will become a haven for geeks. Brain drains get noticed
because they bite countries in the economy, and if
nothing else, that will restore freedom.

Oh, and giving money to the EFF sounds like a good idea.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Proaxiom]

Consider: if Canada keeps its laws relatively sane while the US does not, it will become a haven for geeks. Brain drains get noticed because they bite countries in the economy, and if nothing else, that will restore freedom.

Wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately it's not the case.

Canadian law will be updated to reflect current American law, both the CTEA and the DMCA. For the latter, it's a matter of international commitments. Don't blame the Americans, but blame WIPO and TRIPS (well, okay, blame the Americans too).

Care to read about Canada's coming Intellectual Property reform? It's not for the faint of heart.

And here's some more reading material in case you're not sufficiently riled at our government already.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[iplayfast]

I agree completely. I wrote to my Member of Parliment, saying that I didn't like the direction that the US was going with the DCMA and other issues. I did a quick google search and included references (that supported my view). He wrote back saying that there where many steps to go before legistation that was currently being looked at (which would match the DMCA) would be put into law, and that he would keep an eye on it. It probably has made no difference at all, but then again it might have. Why not do the same in your neighborhood.

I would love it, if Canada was to become the haven for writers and artists who didn't have to worry about copyright. Canada had a communist party 20 years before the US would allow it. To me that shows something about free speech. I'm a Capitalist, but I like the freedom to be able to decide for myself. Same goes with free speech, and copyright.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have less-than-zero say in the American system,

in which case, please weigh in on the side of the RIAA.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[marc987]

I'm a Capitalist

I'm a (Communist(Capitalist)), capitalist on a communist infrastructure, i believe it's the way to go.

To maximize creativity and innovation everything from the operating system on down and through the net should be open standards.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[benedict]

You're not helpless. You can pressure your government
to do what you think is right. If they receive enough
pressure from you and people who think like you do,
then they may choose not to toe the USA's line.

Re:Non-Americans Response?

[alphaseven]

Yes, Canada is a bit more lenient. For example, James Joyces Ulysees is available for download in Canada because it's in the public domain there. There are many different editions available in Canadian bookstores. This is not so in the U.S.

Also, there's no encryption export restrictions in Canada, which is why OpenBsd and ZeroKnowledge are based up there.

Hopefully if Canadians keep pressure on the government, free speech won't be as restrictive as it is in the U.S.

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[Danse]

I think it may just be building a technical infrastructure for trust.

Actually, it would render trust unnecessary.

Congressman's Mailbox

[GrEp]

Great article. Hmm. For some reason I doubt my congressmen read Slash.

I am going to mail a copy of it with a short intro from yours truly to all my congressmen/representitives. I encourage all of you, even those not in the US to do the same. This article does a lot better in their hands than ours. For those in the US that are lazy here is a list of your House members and Senate members that has their adresses and such.

Re:Congressman's Mailbox

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only am I preparing copies of this for my representative and both senators in my state (FL), I'm actually going to mail one to every office listed for each of them (about 2 to 4 offices each). All and all, the cost to me is less than $5.00 in stamps, plus some paper for printing. If even only 20% of the readers of this article can spare a mere $5.00 and a small bit of time, perhaps we can start to pursuade people that this issue needs their immediate attention. Get off your ass and make a try to make a difference!

-AC

Re:Congressman's Mailbox

[Inazuma]

I worked in my (state) senator's office over the summer, and I did get the opportunity to bend some people's ears.

More importantly, I learned how to get the attention of people in political offices: call them.

Think about it: these people get lots (LOTS) of mail, every day, and much though we hate to admit it, not all of it gets read, and even the stuff that does typically doesn't have much effect.

Consider a case where 10 people decide to "do something", so they all write letters. 10 letters show up in the office of a Congressperson, and after one or two, the staff decides that they all pretty much say the same thing, and ignore them.

What if those same 10 people called instead? For one thing, they'd be guaranteed to get more attention. It's a lot harder to ignore someone talking on the line with you, than it is to ignore a piece of mail. And imagine how effective 10 people could be in tying up a Congressional office for a day; you could have them call simultaneously and flood the office, or you could have them call sequentially, preventing the poor staff from getting any work done. A day or two of this treatment is bound to get some results (although make sure to be curteous and understanding; try to set up a meeting, but recognize that it won't be easy at all, and don't be afraid to settle for a meeting with a staffperson, since they're often crucially important in convincing politicians.)

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[fmaxwell]

You wouldn't see anyone 'appointed' -- because they're not appointed. They president nominates someone

The Supreme Court justices appoint the President, not the other way around. People didn't learn anything from the last election.

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you're a small artist, and DRM actually works, you can put a couple of your songs up on
> Napster-clones with the copy bits set to "Copy Forever".

You make the mistake of assuming that small artists will have access to the DRM systems.

more likely, the 'master keys' to the DRM systems will belong to a handful of corporations, who will get to decide who can and cannot publish using DRM.

the small artist will get the choice: either sign your rights over to us in exchange for .01% of the revenues (i.e. the existing situation), or you can't create any content that will play in any DRM-enabled systems.

people who create content without using DRM will of course be classified under the law as "pirates", all non-DRM content will be assumed to be an illegal copy of something, and will be automatically deleted by your DRM-enabled computer in the small chance that you are able to evade the United State's DRM firewall and download it from Cuba.

EFF Lobby

[quark2universe]

If we do donate to the EFF and the like, what are they prepared to do? Do they have a lobby in DC to pull back the ears of the congressman and get some real results? Like it or not, hardly any congressmen read email or snail mail. They have staff people read and summarize what they receive. The only thing those guys hear is cash registers, cha-ching! And a lobby in DC for the EFF or some other similarly minded organization is the only way to effect real change.

Re:EFF Lobby

[ckd]

If we do donate to the EFF and the like, what are they prepared to do? Do they have a lobby in DC to pull back the ears of the congressman and get some real results?

They can't "lobby" and keep their 501(c)3 tax deductible status. OTOH, they can pursue "education" on relevant issues.

(Put bluntly, they can give Congress white papers and testimony, but not money.)

From the About EFF page:

• EFF produces analyses to educate government policymakers and the public about the civil liberties implications of their actions and decisions. We have advised the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on consumer privacy rights, the Sentencing Commission on intellectual property, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) Commission and the National Research Council (NRC) on online censorship, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on encryption, to name a few.
• EFF monitors legislation and agency actions affecting the online community, working with EFF members and other organizations on global, national, state and local levels to affect positive change in technology policy.

Note also that their legal work can sometimes undo bad legislation, and is more susceptible to reasoned argument than "count the dollars"--as long as they have the amount they need to pursue the case in the first place....

Maybe, maybe not.

[nyet]

The whole point to having a regular contributor to /. is to spur not only debate but action. Since nobody takes Katz seriously, all that results from his writings is debate (and usually not very insightful debate at that). Maybe somebody like Lessig can help crystallize the /. community into getting real grassroots political leverage.

Personally, I'm doubtful - too many of us are frustrated, cynical, jaded, and face it, just plain lazy (myself included). We feel powerless and disenfranchised so not only do we stew in apathy, but we also express views which remain inaccessible and incomprehensible to the type of optimistic, motivated people who form the base of a successful movement.

We need somebody who can translate our whining into clever 30 second sound bytes for mass consumption. And there is NO way Katz is up to that. Maybe Lessig is.

Re:Maybe, maybe not.

[kenzoid]

> We need somebody who can translate our whining into clever 30 second sound bytes > for mass consumption. And there is NO way Katz is up to that. Maybe Lessig is.

We need to stop whining and act. We need to stop sitting around, moaning to ourselves, and talk to others outside our Tribe. We need to live up to our promise, and help people understand how important the Net is, and how screwed up things are in danger of becoming...

Re:Maybe, maybe not.

[Antaeus Feldspar]

Now this gives me an idea for something that we can do. You've put it in an excellent form: 30-second sound bites are the major weapon that non-corporations have available today.

So let's organize a Sound Bite For Freedom contest. Everyone tries to come up with the 30-second sound bite that can most forcefully and memorably explain what is wrong with the DMCA, the DeCSS case, et cetera.

I'll try to start by adapting a salient point of Professor Lessig's:

Congress sold thousands of years of ownership to the corporations, of works that belonged to the public. Now -- who got paid, in exchange for that? It wasn't the public!

And here's where we put the contentious nature of Slashdot to work for us. Don't like my sound bite? Do better!

Will we do it?

[ahde]

Mr. Lessig complains about the complacency of the Slashdot crowd and suggests we are lazy because we do not participate politically or (even better) donate enough money to political organizations like the one that pays him (the EFF).

He calls for us to become "environmentalists" for the internet, and I think there is where he finds issue with us most. Slashdot readers do not ascribe as a whole to all the political beliefs he supports, even if many share his concerns regarding privacy, copyright, and technical issues.

Well, I am not an enviornmentalist, and I do not approve of environmentalist tactics, and I do not consider the internet an "envirmonment" that needs preserved. I don't share a full range of political beliefs that coincide with his, or with John Perry Barlow's, or with Richard Stallman's.

I don't agree with everything Eric Raymond's views either, although I believe his Geeks With Guns movement does a better job of relating personal freedoms to cyberspace. But he has earned my respect because he doesn't ask for my money, and also because he helps with some of the most unloved and unappreciated open source jobs (like correcting documentation).

The way to fight a corrupt political system is not to feed it. I'm sure someone said something about replacing one tyrant with another. I'm not saying Mr. Lessig, or RMS, or the EFF are bad or wrong. But just because I don't pay your salary doesn't mean I'm not doing my part for freedom.

Re:Will we do it?

[flavor]

You complain about the politics of Dr. Lessig and suggest that he is part of a corrupt political system because he put out a general call for activism in favor of personal freedoms.

He made this call for activism in a forum which is peopled by technologists who habitually post complaints about the diminishment of personal freedom by corporations (just do a search on ./ for "Skylarov" for ample proof).

He made this call in a forum which would not exist if it wasn't for these very personal freedoms being discussed.

And yet you still find grounds to complain about his attempts at activism. I'm sure the world would be a much better place if we all just shut our eyes and hoped for the best, but I'd much rather take the safe route and at least try to be part of the solution.

Re:Will we do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are conflating two very different things: "feeding" a corrupt system and donating money for legal actions. Despite the incredible social inequalities of the U.S., and the cozy relationship between corporations and the government, the courts are still a valuable and legitimate way to effect change.

How do you "fight" for freedom? It seems to me you are discussing your personal freedom, and not social freedoms. This self-absorption allows you to dismiss environmentalist tactics and the significance of the Internet, because you don't see them connected to your personal freedom. It is exactly this bourgeois complacency that allows states and corporations to destroy social freedoms. And when Lessig says this, you are defensive because he means you. And he's right.

Re:Will we do it?

[ahde]

it is exactly the simple rhetoric and narrow mindedness exhibited above that breeds oppressive regimes. "Bougeois" has been used exclusively by communists and naive academics for over a century.

If I don't pay Green Peace then I must be a Republican southern Baptist oil magnate homophobe Libertarian logger?

Re:The source

[cbowland]

Actually, Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) also used the nom de plume Theo LeSieg, with LeSieg obviously being Geisel spelled backwards. So the comparison of Lessig and Dr. Seuss is not really all that strange.

75-year copyright term

[Boatman]

Great words from Lawrence, but I have to take issue with his notion of a copyright renewable up to 75 years. At least he would require renewing every 5 years, but that's just an inconvenience, not a limit. We need the keys to our culture back within a sufficient time period that we can actually allow our culture to continue to develop!

When something like "happy birthday to you" or "gone with the wind" becomes so much a part of our culture, how can we justify leaving its reins in the hands of the person who happened to put the words together - for an entire lifetime? The author synthesized it from the intellectual beams and trusses of our culture, and our culture then assimilates it. We whistle its tunes and quote its catchphrases, but we can't use it to build larger monuments in the commons. With current trends, none of our descendants will, either - but even with a 75 year copyright, our children's children will be grown before that right would become available to them.

I'll be dead before I can write variations on "Just another brick in the wall", share a copy of the out-of-production "Swing Kids", or put on a production of "Phantom of the Opera" in my neighborhood.

The tragedy of the Commons

[Desperado]

Dr. Lessig's comparason of the Internet as a Commons created for the free use of all and its gradual co-option by corporate/national interests reminded me of an old poem:

"The law condemns the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose."

We need to focus more on the Commons and how it benefits us all and less on the individual transgressions on the Commons.

Challenge to Slashdotters

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

There's a challenge to slashdotters here, and I wonder if anyone reading this is up to it. Lessig is absolutely right that an important role for us digerati is to convince more Americans that there is a real threat right now to our core values as a society.

I am thinking of Forming a PAC (Political Action Committee) to handle the PR/political machine side of this issue, as the EFF seems to be focussed more on the courts and influencing legislation *before* it's passed, and I think they do a good job at those activities. I almost registered a domain for such an entity today, but I think I want to research some of the relevant regulations WRT PACS and non-profits before I invest my personal cash in this.

The two first objectives I think I'd personally have for this organization is to build a war chest to campaign VERY AGRESSIVELY against any member of Congress who votes for anything remotely resembling the SSSCA. I'm not sure if that would mean campaigning for a particular opponent in each race, or just lots of negative advertising about the candidate.

Additionally, I'd like to see a TV commercial in heavy prime-time rotation which tells Americans how the MPAA & RIAA don't want them to have empowering technology and how Jack Valenti thinks the right of African Americans to creatively interpret their experience of our country's history is "insignificant."

As I said, I'm going to look into this. If anyone else thinks this is a good idea and is actually willing to do something about it too, let me know.

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a good idea. Generally, the /. readership is concerned about freedom. However, beyond that, there's not much that brings us together. Are you sure such a PAC would be cohesive enough to be effective? Or would it devolve into partisan bickering?

A perfect example: another poster mentioned he'd love to get Lessig on the SCOTUS if Scalia were to leave, but someone else replied that Scalia would be friendly toward us because he's a strict constructionist. Maybe the first poster doesn't like Scalia for other reasons?

If such a PAC were in existence, I'd want it to be fair. If a 3rd party supports our cause, give them the money despite the "fact" *cough* that they can't win. (So what? Let's act on principle.) If a candidate the technological freedom issues the PAC stands for, he should be promoted by the PAC, even if the PAC leadership happens to disagree with him on other issues. (Again, stand for the principles we're supposedly promoting.)

If I felt that this PAC would act this way, I could see myself supporting it. Otherwise I'd feel better off supporting my favorite candidates directly.

ChristTrekker (with mod points today)

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

That's why I said I don't know whether the best strategy would be to support particular candiates, or just campaign against the offending ones. I know "Geeks" often don't have a lot of common ground, which is what leads me to believe that *not* supporting particular candidates is the best idea. Hell, even Hollings may be great on certain issues. But he's trying to take away my freedoms, so screw him. He needs to be punished, and I can think of no better way to do that then to make sure he doesn't reclaim his office.

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, nobody likes negativity. It oftens ends up making the speaker look bad, rather than his target. Sure, we'd need to point out that Sen. X is infringing on our freedoms (and what that means to Joe Sixpack), and that might work well for slashdotters that couldn't unite on a single alternate candidate. But would the public just see our PAC as a group of whiners?

It's easy to whine. It's hard to stand by principles. *shrug* I don't know the best way to go about this, either. The PAC is a good idea in theory. Reality is going to be more difficult. It always is.

ChristTrekker

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[jjohnston]

Wouldn't it make more sense to support the EFF? They already have a running start on this. The more of us who get involved in this, the more powerful it becomes. Also lend your copies of the Lessig books to your friends, (er, maybe we should insist that our friends purchase his books .)

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

I've never seen an ad sponsored by the EFF and I get the idea that that's not what they are about.

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[sulli]

Maybe they could be convinced to run some? The ACLU runs them all the time, both getting them members and PR.

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[jjohnston]

I think my point is if more folks like us are involved and contributing to the EFF, it will influence the organization. One hard problem is how do you demonstrate to "normal" people that they should care about this? Valenti has a valid point: the bovinity of the general public creates a society that has no clues that they should care. They don't care, and they see no problem with the corporate broadcast (controlled) model we are evolving to.

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[acaben]

I think this is a great idea. I have some background in political fundraising and would like to contribute. I sent a message to what I hope is the originator's email address, but I thought I'd post my address here just in case anyone else would like to get in contact and discuss the idea.

Feel free to email me at acaben@mac.com.

Re:Challenge to Slashdotters

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio Shack made a nice ad pointing out the
serious potential for that new DVD player to
not be able to hook to the TV without a
modulator (go to RS and buy it! the ad begs).

It would be great to make a similar ad that
points out the reason the DVD player won't
hook to your TV is because the MPAA thinks
you're a criminal and can't be trusted to
route it through your VCR which already has
the modulator.

LL's Radio Interview

[sphix42]

L.L. Talked with Diane Rehm yesterday about his new book and one of the callers was Hillary Rosen.

Listen to link at bottom of page.

Re:LL's Radio Interview

[Boatman]

The audio itself is at:

http://www.wamu.org/ram/2001/r2011220.ram

If not, what can be changed?

[2Bits]

The DMCA as a whole won't be struck down - ever

If stupid legistations like this can be passed, and can never be struck down, wouldn't any political activism be a lost cause, then?

If this is the case, what's the message to the mega corp? They can buy all the laws that will favor them, as they know that none can be struck down later.

I believe there's a need to "do some clean-up", at least, clean up the irrelevant, the stupid, the ugly, the unjust, and the redundant laws.

Or can this only be achieved through a bloody revolution? I hope not.

Re:If not, what can be changed?

[Happy Monkey]

If stupid legistations like this can be passed, and can never be struck down, wouldn't any political activism be a lost cause, then?

He said "as a whole". Laws are so big these days that it would be quite unlikely for every clause to be unconstitutional. Now, in the infinite future, it is likely that all of the parts will eventually become obsolete, and be overridden by new ones, but they won't all be "struck down".

best... inverview... ever...

[Ender Ryan]

That was by far probably one of the best /. interviews ever to grace this site. You know, I always get fed up with the content of this site now and then, usually when things are slow and boring, but the #1 thing I like about /. (eat your heart out K5, nothing over there even touches it) is /.'s interviews.

There have really been some absolutely excellent interviews here on /..

Really, that's the only positive thing I usually have to say about /., but even still just for that and the mindless linking to good content, really makes this site still worthwhile.

With that out of the way... ;-)

This is an extremely important interview, this guy makes some really powerful points. WE (the people that "get it") need to get off our asses and do something. It's going to take serious sacrifice on our part though. It's going to cost money, time, energy and it's going to be one hell of a stressful ride.

First thing you can do is get out that credit card or checkbook and send money to the EFF or freedom fighting organization of your choice. Don't just give a little, give a lot! If it doesn't hurt, then you're not giving enough. They NEED money to fight this fight!

Write your representitives, both e and snail mail.

Other than that I really don't know, I'm not good at this type of thing, but we all need to learn. We need some leaders to step up and lead us in fighting this fight. And we need to give them our full support, and we need to gain the support of the public.

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[vkg]

Ok, where's your evidence for this?

Even if a DRM licence costs $50K, hell, even if it's $100K, companies or groups of artists can buy a key and then syndicate the service: you send in your work and an affadavit that it's yours, they charge you some cash to sign it, and off it goes into the content pool.

Don't knock it: widespread deployment of cryptographic systems may require government mandate.

Vinay

Good idea

[sulli]

Where will you get the $millions to run hit TV ads? I love the concept ("Ernest Hollings wants to take away YOUR freedom") but where are the bux?

Re:Good idea

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

That is the point. It's a PAC. The bux will come from me, you, and anyone else reading this or subsequent info about it and deciding that they agree and want to give money/get a tax credit for standing up for their ideals.

Re:Good idea

[bani]

Just raise a big stink, dig up a political scandal, and the news networks will run your ads FOR you, free.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm. the issue is that the networks themselves are politically scandalous. I don't think they will be running that story.

Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[hubbabubba]

More importantly, I think we need to restrict the scope of "derivative rights" more than we do today. Copyright owners deserve to be paid for the use of their work; they should not be allowed to veto follow on work that builds on theirs.

This view is almost always espoused by people who don't actually create anything that has value. When I take a series of photographs, they are MINE. Period. End of story. Nobody should have the right to incorporate MY images in derivative works without my permission. It isn't about getting paid, it's about having control over what *I* created, and to ensure that no one can pervert my work by using it in ways that I don't like. If you want a photo that looks like mine to incorporate in your own work, GO TAKE ONE YOURSELF.

Compulsory rights require that the author of the original work get paid, but the rate is either set by the law, or set by a panel to be relatively low. This will give artists more than they would have had, had there been no Internet. But it will assure that innovators can build out the future of the Internet without the control of dinosaur industries.

More than they would have had? Says who? The market determines the value of IP, and that's the way it should stay. Building these values into the law or setting them by committee is preposterous. Sorry for the photo-centric examples, but I can't imagine that a classic image by Ansel Adams, which is worth enormous sums of money, should have a value fixed by a copyright law that says you can pay his estate $30, then go right ahead and incorporate "Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico" in the graphics for your new website. That's just wrong-headed, and I'd love to hear Lessig defend his view. Cuz I just ain't buying it.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[atari8]

This view is almost always espoused by people who don't actually create anything that has value.

Lessig does create things that have value. He's the author of at least two books, including the highly regarded Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

...they are MINE. Period. End of story.

But it's not the end of the story. The US Constitution allows for copyright as a privilege that vests for a limited time (compare to rights to real property or personal property, which are theoretically eternal). I think the Constitutional view of copyright is more compatible with the phrase "intellectual privilege" or "intellectual lease" rather than "intellectual property", because in the English language we don't usually call something your property if it's only yours for a limited time.

My point, with which I hope Prof. Lessig would agree, is that Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is not "HIS. Period. End of story." He does have an exclusive right to control it, but only for a limited time.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[argoff]

This view is almost always espoused by people who don't actually create anything that has value. ....

On the contrary, your view is espoused only by creators who create things of little value, and then expect some glorious all reaching monopoly in return. The mathematician who coppies a math book and adds one or two of their own personal formulas gives society far more value than half the madonna's on the planet.

More than they would have had? Says who? The market determines the value of IP, and that's the way it should stay. ...

Even more bull. Markets are set by natural limits in supply and demand. Information has almost no natural limits in supply, but people do - and copyright law completely ignores this, and so does this agrument. It's a market regulation. get it.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[hubbabubba]

I am aware of his work as an author, which is why I qualified my comment with "almost." It was meant to reach beyond Lessig, but I didn't express that very clearly. There certainly are some creators who, for whatever reason, are willing to diminish their rights to their own work. I'm not one of them.

I am also well aware that copyright is time-limited, and I don't disagree with that. I definitely overstated the degree of finality that applies to my ability to control uses of my work, but my main point isn't about the duration of copyright. It's about Lessig's view that derivative rights should be restricted and that values for derivative uses should be set by law or committee. On these points I strenuously disagree.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[Happy Monkey]

If you want a photo that looks like mine to incorporate in your own work, GO TAKE ONE YOURSELF.

Couldn't that also be considered a derivitive work, the way things are interpreted now?

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[clone304]

When you take photographs, you are infringing on GOD(TM)'s copyright. As a servant and representative of GOD(TM), I hereby inform you that you are in violation of the copyright laws of the United States of America. Furthermore, we require that you send all of your copies of GOD(TM)'s work to us within 14 business days, or face criminal prosecution and the Wrath of GOD(TM).

GOD(TM) created this world and everything in it. If you continue to attempt reproduction of it's wonders, even with your silly low bandwidth devices, you will be prosecuted. This world is HIS! And don't you forget it!

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[hubbabubba]

Hogwash. My view is espoused by vast numbers of people who create art, music and other forms of IP that often has immense value. Your view is espoused by people who want to deny creators the right to reap the fair market value of their work, as if you have some sort of God-given right to the product of MY talents and to use MY work for whatever purpose you see fit.

Your second point is even less cogent. The kind of information to which I refer isn't some generic product available in unlimited quantities, it is a finite amount of work produced by individual authors. As such, it not only has the prerequisite scarcity that determines value in the market, but qualitative value based on how "good" or "bad" the market perceives it to be. That's why an original Ansel Adams print will set you back a couple hundred thou, whilst a print of my latest masterpiece can be had for a couple hundred bucks.

Information may *want* to be free, but so does beer, and I almost always have to pay for that.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Go take one ourself? But that's illegal (at least where I live), if it looks too much like the one you took!

The "copy control" part of copyright seems like theft to me.

That you can "own" IP... where does that notion come from? How do you justify it? The burden of justification is on you, friend.

People who take copies of other people's IP aren't taking the actual IP; just *copies*. You still have your precious photographs, don't worry about them. But if you're such an artistic giant, it would be kind of you to allow others to "stand on your shoulders to see farther".

With love.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[atari8]

It's about Lessig's view that derivative rights should be restricted and that values for derivative uses should be set by law or committee.

I agree with you that Lessig's vision of compulsory licensing is too broad. But what about his example of The Wind Done Gone? Parody and satire, among other things, increase in artistic value the closer they approximate the original work before veering off into their own unique spin.

I would not agree with someone who wanted to take a copy of one of your photographs and incorporate it into their own work without your permission. If, however, one of your photographs because famous, and people started shooting photographs that look very much like yours, whether in tribute or in mockery, I would consider those works permissable. Big business almost never considers works like that permissable, and almost always sues to stop it. I think (and hope) that that's what Lessig was trying to get at.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[hubbabubba]

It's an interesting dilemma. I agree that parody and satire should be considered non-infringing, at least to the degree that they truly are original works. If the author of Done Gone had lifted entire passages from GWTW and incorporated them in the work, then I would consider it an infringement on the author's original prose. I can think of quite a few examples where an artist's "style" has been ripped-off, but aren't (and probably shouldn't be) considered as infringing. Gary Larsen's Far Side comic strip comes to mind. So if someone copied my style as a photographer, I might be disgusted if they did it poorly (or flattered if they did it well), but I couldn't complain that they were infringing on my rights. If, however, they set out to duplicate a specific photograph by reproducing the subject, composition, lighting technique and exposure, then I'd consider it a violation of my copyright because that particular "vision", if you will, belongs to me. I guess the bottom line is that it's a terribly murky issue, and broad brush solutions like compulsory rights are fraught with difficulties. In any case, thanks for your thoughtful replies, and all the best for the holidays.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[GemFire]

Tell me, what are you taking a picture of? Is it something you personally own that you created, on your own property, a house you built from your design, with every plant personally raised from a seed from genetics you designed as well? If it isn't, then you are using part of the Public Domain for your photograph. What makes you think you can take something that belongs to other people and own it yourself, forever?

Nobody creates from a vacuum and anyone who says they do is a liar or stupid. I've never seen a photograph (especially a photograph!) that was totally of the photographer's creativity. Most photography isn't creative hardly at all - it's skill, a good eye (the only creative aspect of unadulterated photos) and often simple blind luck. That isn't something to be rewarded with a lifetime (+70) monopoly.

And even if I could agree that YOU should have that monopoly, I certainly couldn't see giving it to your heirs to 4 generations. You want to provide for your heirs - start a trust fund.

Rant over.

Let's put the Constitution back into copyright: http://www.amfcc.org

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[argoff]

Hogwash. My view is espoused by vast numbers of people who create art, music and other forms of IP that often has immense value. Your view is espoused by people who want to deny creators the right to reap the fair market value of their work, as if you have some sort of God-given right to the product of MY talents and to use MY work for whatever purpose you see fit.

Yes I do, me making a copy doesn't deprive you of your work or the product of your talents in any way what so-ever. And that fact won't change because "vast numbers of people who create art, music and other forms of IP that often has immense value" believe otherwise. Nor does it change the fact that IP works against value creators at the expense of attention creators.

Your second point is even less cogent. The kind of information to which I refer isn't some generic product available in unlimited quantities, it is a finite amount of work produced by individual authors. As such, it not only has the prerequisite scarcity that determines value in the market, but qualitative value based on how "good" or "bad" the market perceives it to be. That's why an original Ansel Adams print will set you back a couple hundred thou, whilst a print of my latest masterpiece can be had for a couple hundred bucks.

And why a copy of Ansel Adams can be had for free at the same price as a copy of your latest masterpiece. Charging for something you do or physically have is alot differnet than charging everytime a 3rd party makes a copy. One has limited supply and the other nearly doesn't. If you can't deal with that reality, then you shouldn't have let the cat out of the bag.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[coats]

A copyright regime as in the DMCA, which authorizes "technical means of protection" that never expire does not satisfy the constitutional demand that copyright term be "for a limited time." As far as I am concerned (as a 48-year-old conservative mathematician with a very well-tuned bullshit-meter), this provision is unconstitutional on its face.

As far as that goes, if Congress is free retroactively to extend the term of existing copyrights, then that term is by definition not limited. (I have also heard the argument that this extension is not a Constitutionally-forbidden ex post facto law; having heard ito, I fully understand the origin of Bill Clinton's "It depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is".)

Nor, given that no copyright term has expired within my adult lifetime, nor can I expect any to expire before I'm dead, can I consider copyright term to be "limited" in any operational sense.

I see the current copyright regime as a Constitutional outrage, and I see very few in the legal profession, the courts, Congress, and Executive--all sworn to uphold the Constitution, by the way--who are willing even to consider these issues.

Re:Keep Your Hands Off My IP

[Anonymous Coward]

If you take a picture of a person, would you share your profits with them? Did you tithe to your mentor or favorite photographer for using their techniques?

It's interesting how this possessive individualism of yours conveniently erases how much you depend on a commons for the creation of "your" art.

Mea culpa

[jayed_99]

He does have a point.

We can't delude ourselves into thinking that whining on /. accompishes anything other than creating more input for a vicious feed-back loop that results in more whining on /. Someone can make a wonderful, insightful post, and it's like throwing chum into the shark tank. Nothing happens except we use it to justify the opinions that we already have. Hell, I'm just as guilty of it as anyone. I'll read a bunch of stuff, and just file it away so I can use it the next time I get into an argument. But I don't actually *do* anything about it.

(And please, don't think that illicit, annonymous MP3 trading means you're engaging in civil disobedience. If it's not public; if it's not en masse; if the cops aren't tear-gassing your unruly mob; if nobody outside of /. is appaled about it -- it's not civil disobedience...the value is in the "civil" not the "disobedience").

The only time I ever did anything differently was when the news about Dmitry broke. I was so appalled that I donated $250 (roughly 0.3% of my annual salary -- less than that after I figure my tax deductions for this year) to the EFF so I could feel good about myself. Sure, it helped the EFF, but really it was to sooth my own guilt about not doing anything. See, I can now go around and say, "I gave money to the EFF. Did you?" (Of course, I made them send me the hat and the tshirt).

Did I write one damned letter? To anybody? Nope. No email; no snailmail. Becuase I had given some pathetic amount of money to the EFF, I was a good person. I didn't need to do anything else to feel good.

I spread the word about Dmitry by telling my wife (who is only a techie by osmosis). For months, she randomly would ask, "what's going on with the poor Russian guy?". Of course, I track the news -- I'm aware of the issues -- so I'd tell her what the latest Dmitry news was; we'd commiserate about the stupidity of it, and we'd be done.

Once again, because I knew what was going on...because I could explain about this hideous assault on our rights...I felt good about myself.

I think that this disjunction between what I believe and what I do about those beliefs is due to the fact that, as a geek, I'm used to dealing with two types of arguments: one without an answer and one with an answer.

The first type has an indeterminate answer (the religious wars)...vi versus emacs (vi)...BSD versus Linux (BSD)...GNOME or KDE (KDE).

It doesn't really matter what the answer is, we all just like to argue about it and we all (hopefully) realize that ultimately it doesn't matter. No matter what side of the argument you choose, you'll still be able to get the job done. Your answer has more to do about differentiating yourself into the appropriate geek-tribe than it has to do with anything else.

The second type of argument is the one with a definite answer...How should I upgrade this Oracle 8.0 database to Oracale 8i? What is the best way to backup this contacts database? How do I write a bubblesort routine?

There are definite right and wrong answers to these questions. And if you pick the wrong one, you are going to suffer. And when you call me at 3:00AM, I am going to say, "I told you so!" and count my big geek-coup as I dance the victory dance on your stupid ass when I come in Monday morning. And you'll owe me many favors because I helped you out of the mess that you got yourself into by not listening to me.

We all agree that the DMCA/copyright/trademark/patent/IP (hereafter known as "the issues") issues are of the second category. They have a right and a wrong answer. We are conditioned that when arguing about these type of questions all we need to do is say, "Your answer is wrong because of XYZ." Because we know that if you choose to make the wrong decision after we told you, you will be bitten on the ass and come crying to us to fix it.

The problem is that the domain of the "the issues" is such that we will be penalized as well. And it's not going to be some short-term-next-Saturday-night kind of punishment. It will be a long-term, corrosive punishment. One day, we'll all wake up and say, "Fuck me. How did this happen?" But that's OK...because deep in our hearts, we'll all be saying, "I told you so."

re: Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions

[theNeophile]

I know there are many who resist this view. Many believe MSFT is the devil. I'm not one of those people. And my concern is that if we obsess about old wars, we won't understand the nature of the new.

Look everyone, a big wooden horse, it must be a gift. Come on everyone, lets get it into the town. That walls going to have to come down though.

all or nothing

[Eugene O'Neil]

The problem I have with disobedience is that it reenforces the Valenti-way of looking at the world. Copyright hoarders demand increasingly extreme rights so that they may exercise almost perfect control over how their content gets used. In response, the civil disobedience movement sends a message that they should have no control over how their content gets used at all. Between perfect control and no control, most would choose perfect control. And hence, we lose.

I disagree. I find that most people are easy to win over to the side of no control, especially if you give them a taste of what that forbidden thing called freedom tastes like. The only people who want to enforce total control are the people who would have total control, and they are few and far between. The vast majority of people would be controlled by these laws, and nobody who really understands that position wants to be in it. The more we flaunt the uninforcability of these stupid laws, the sooner we will be free of them. It is too late for comprimises: congress has already shown that it cannot be trusted to leave the laws alone in any sort of reasonable state. If they demand all or nothing, I will give them nothing!

Re:all or nothing

[argoff]

I agree with you. And he then goes on to say "Disobedience makes sense when you are saying there should be no regulation of the kind you attack", and talks about Martin Luther King.

However, someone should point out to him that the problems with MLK started out several hundred years before with indentured servitude. Being short term, for blacks or for whites, and a method for gaining new property in the Americas - it sounded very reasonable. It is only after we learnt the long term consequences that we see how evil it is.

The same is true with copyrights. The consequences of copyrights are becomming all to clear. In this context, they should be opposed all together and civil disobediance makes perfict sense.

Townhall meeting across America?

[2Bits]

Better yet, could any organization sponsor a tour of townhall meetings across America, to educate the general population what is going on? And have Larry Lessig explains in the "easily comprehensible english terms"?

I'll donate $100 to support this tour.

Re:Townhall meeting across America?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give that hundred to the EFF and see him in a courtroom instead, acting as an expert witness. The american public doesn't give a rats ass about computer stuff, other than soliate. Didn't you see the Jupiter Media Metrix report? they're all out playing solitare.

watch valenti vs lessig round 2 for some hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

By sheer coincidence, I watched the video of lessig vs valenti round 2 right before reading this. Seeing the calm, reasoned, (and humourous, even) Lessig vs the pointless-anecdote-spouting, point-avoiding, blusterous and just generally bullsh*t ridden Valenti (he introduces Elizabeth Shue in the audience as a response to one point), I can hardly believe that intelligent people would buy his viewpoint over Lessig's.

Re:Objection

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell you how much your pig-headed attitude astonishes me. Just because someone doesn't bow down and blindly worship the almighty Linux beside you, doesn't mean that he's a moron and should immediately be discredited. You disagree because you fear the future. I believe that he has a pretty good idea of what will happen. Microsoft could be an ally just as easily as any other corporation. However, they are not, because they don't support freedom in the sense it should be supported. One day they might find it necessary to change tactics, or else they will become extinct.

Lessig is...

[Anonymous Coward]

a minor diety. "Code" is insightful and meets in the middle of geek & law. I had the opportunity to attend a dinner with him when i was taking 6.805 last spring at MIT, and found him an elegant and persuasive speaker.

Personally, I think most geeks are ignorant of what's really going on, legally, and instead rely on second hand or /. style information. Why? We'll, it's easier to be 'cynical chic' than an activist (and I mean not just sending emails around and signing petitions).

The cases are out there, you can read them for free and learn how to think like a lawyer. "They" aren't willing to learn to communicate with us but we're smart enough to learn how to communicate with them.

Think of law as code for our government. Just like real code, there are loopholes, exceptions, vague error handling, etc. But if you're a hacker, you'll find the loopholes, the exceptions, the tools you need to 'write' a good argument and if you're involved you can start educating lawyers and effect the 'code' being written & 'checked in' -right now-! :)

limor (ladyada@mit)

Never going to happen

[Rkane]

All of this talk about sending emails and snail mail to representatives will never happen effectively as is. Picture this: A room full of people packed in like sardines. Each one of them turns to face you and says "what can one person do?"

People can be so closely tied together and STILL not make a difference because they don't believe they can. If you want to make a difference, I hate to say it but you may need to form an actual group of some sort. A leader may help.

Honestly, though, 2000 slightly related emails to a senator mean nothing. When he gets 5000, all saying the same things, backed by an organization with the power of 5000 people behind it, they have to respect that.

I'm not saying that sending a letter is worth nothing, but it could be worth so much more if it was organized properly.

Just
my ($.02)

Absolutely

[Galvatron]

A question though. Do you know anything about how to go about this, or are you just looking to recruit someone who knows what to do?

Re:Absolutely

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

I'm going to investigate it a little on my own first, and see how hard it looks like it'll be, and get an idea of what's required. At this point I don't know what kind of resources will be required. I suspect that it's not so much a question of expertise as it is resources & compliance w/ regulations, but I could be wrong.

Of course, anyone who wants to volunteer expertise is welcome.

Re:Absolutely

[Pseudonym]

Among others with PAC experience, you might want to talk to Bruce Perens. (The real one, that is.) This idea is somewhat aligned with the original intent behind the now-defunct technocrat.net.

Good luck.

Re:Absolutely

[driftwood]

Among others with PAC experience, you might want to talk to Bruce Perens. (The real one, that is.) This idea is somewhat aligned with the original intent behind the now-defunct technocrat.net.

Perhaps this is the time to revive technocrat.net. Using what Perens had already started would give this new PAC a good jump start.

Personally, I would love to see artists and actors donating thier money made from the enterainment industry for a TV ad campaign against the RIAA and MPAA that supposedly represents them.

Attention conservation tip

[extra88]

The Hillary Rosen phone call starts about 29 minutes into the interview.

She's stupid and baiting.

Yeah, no kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot believe how much smarter I am than Lessig, and how much better my grasp of copyright issues is. This must be very embarrassing for him.

You guys didn't read it

[Breace]

Obviously anyone posting so quickly after the article appeared didn't read it. It's impossible to sit down behind a keyboard after such a mercyless spanking.

Seriously, this is the best interview I've ever read. As a foreigner (alien) living in the US there's little political stuff I could do, but sponsoring the EFF is something EVERYONE can do. (and obviously not only in the interest of the US,- hint!)

OT:That came from a true-to-life "Comic Book Guy!"

[i_am_nitrogen]

Top ten signs someone was the inspiration for CBG:

1. Disagrees with everything (especially this article).
2. Spends all his time at Sci-Fi conventions.
3. Has ever used the phrase "oh, if only the real chicks went down this easily"
4. Complains to the actors about every single plot hole and discrepancy in every single episode of every single version of every single series.
5. Gets upset when someone gets lazy and only puts five signs when ten were advertized.

Whether you're just trolling under the bridge or you really believe that this was the WORST....ARTICLE....EVER, Lessig displays the attitude necessary to accomplish what nearly every Slashdot reader wants to.

Looking for a 1-page rundown on the DMCA

[IronChef]

I run a publishing company. On my web site I am going to place a policy statement about how the PDFs we sell won't ever have printing or text copying disabled, even though the DMCA makes all kinds of "fair use" restrictions legal. I'm not shouting on the soapbox, just doing my part to educate the public.

In this policy statement I wanted to link to a page describing what the DMCA is and why people should care about it. But believe it or not I could not find such a page. The only DMCA material I found was lengthy and tiresome, talking about Adobe and the Sklyarov case and blah blah blah... No one visiting my game company site is going to want to read pages like these:

The EFF's US vs. Sklyarov FAQ Page
Long, doesn't get to the point, doesn't even provide a quick link to what The Point is.

The Anti-DMCA Site
This is a terrible site. Right on the front page they ought to have a summary of their message, but there are just a load of links. Click on the Frequently Asked Questions link. There are no FAQs there, but there are FAQ links, one of which takes you to this FAQ page. Again, no one-pager on What is is and Why we should care. The closest thing is the What is the DMCA entry, which is a yawner, leading off with something about the World Intellectual Property Organization.

If anyone knows where I can find a well-written explanation of the DMCA that is suitable for the microscopic attention span of the typical web surfer, please post a link.

Re:Looking for a 1-page rundown on the DMCA

[Pseudonym]

Be careful, though. Not all of the DMCA is even controversial, such as the bit which makes using web proxies legal. Make sure that you specify the "anti-circumvention provisions".

Re:Looking for a 1-page rundown on the DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude:

Don't look for a link, that's not CREATIVE.

WRITE Your OWN! You're a publisher, hire one of your authors to WRITE YOUR OWN explanation of DMCA and why it's anti-american enuff to be authored by Goebbels.

Whine, whine whine about no one has a link, for god's sake. "Just Do It" (R)Nike corp.

Links for the motivated;

[Passacaglia]

If you're inspired to become a gadfly to those who think they can turn you into a consuming conforming ruminant:

First off, check out Dennis Powell's advice on responding to the DOJ's attempt to give the Internet to MS.

Never let your senator or congressperson do anything that concerns you and your liberties without hearing from you.

I've never seen Common Cause mentioned here, but they are a real lobbying group who deserve your support and dollars, have done so for decades.

Comments

[Greyfox]

I've a few comments on some of his points. Lets see if I can cover everything...

1) What a long winded way of saying "70 year copyrights mean that most of the works the copyright laws were meant to encourage are lost." We're losing a lot of video game history because eproms don't last more than a decade or so. A lot of those games were damn creative (And still quite playable.) Books, films, works of genius all going away because even if someone does care, they can't make the work available for others who might be interested. Sad.

2) A lot of us are politically yes. At the very very least, get registered to vote and always vote against the incumbent. That'll at least keep our politicians fresh and too inexperienced to make much trouble. Or the entire /. population could descend on Montana or somewhere and take over through sheer force of numbers. This would buy us actual representation in Congress.

3) Why would we not realize that open standards on the end-to-end network are not vital? One of my greatest fears is that some Evil company that shall remain namless will subvert TCP/IP, making it impossible for me to connect my Linux box to the net.

4) I try to explain to non-techies I know that the new laws and media (HDTV for one) could prevent them from even being able to record their favorite shows -- this is an immediate threat and impact on their lives, you see. However my voice is limited and I have trouble reaching enough people. I have some contacts in more conventional forms of media, but thus far I have not been able to entice one of them to do a story on the topic.

6) Most people only realize that MSFT is, in fact, the devil until it's far too late. History is littered with the corpses of companies that have made this mistake (Sorry for the melodrama. Couldn't resist.) What Microsoft must want from .net is the ability to tax ever transaction that takes place on the internet, which would give them more economic power than any government on the planet.

What? Why must they must want that? Come on. Even if they thought it up brainstorming ways to make it easier and more convienent to shop on the net, it'll have had to occur to someone almost immediately that they could, in the process, tax every transaction that takes place.

Have you ever played poker with a newbie? When they get a good hand, they look everywhere but at the pot because they don't want you to know how good their hand is. I notice that when Microsoft talks about .net, they're not looking at the transaction tax pot, and they're not looking at it REALLY HARD. You be the judge...

12) Code is demonstrably speech. Code is a method of communication between programmers. If we didn't need that communication, we'd still be programming in ones and zeros, which would allow us to make the most efficient use of the hardware.

The Internet's values are similar in many respects to our Founding Fathers. Who as we all know, were a bunch of vandelous rabble rousers. I mean, look at that whole Boston tea thing. They laid out a rabble-rouser-friendly foundation to our government because they were in charge then. Unfortunately the authoritarian government that would maximize corporate profits by insuring that all citizens remain good little consumers causes conflicts with this rabble-rousing foundation. And since destroying that foundation could cause problems, they have to chip away at it a bit at a time until nothing's left. That's what's happening now.

Re:Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

At the very very least, get registered to vote and always vote against the incumbent. That'll at least keep our politicians fresh and too inexperienced to make much trouble.

This has got to be one of the all-time dumb statements on slashdot. The primary problem with legislators and technology is that they don't know enough. Keep swapping them out every election, with no consideration for what they do, and you'll only make things worse.

I'm just as unhappy as anyone here with the way technology is being turned into one long string of cash cows by and for the megacorps, but we have to be more intelligent about how we respond than this.

We need to make art

[epepke]

We need to relearn this lesson - in general, and in the context of the Internet. You guys could help teach that lesson. Indeed, only technologists have the credibility to speak reason to this idiot power. But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

I'm surprised and pleased that more people haven't taken umbrage at this and other comments, because they deserve some clear discussion. I don't take umbrage at all, but I do think that the comment is inaccurate. We may be cynical, but I don't know of another group of people that, pound for pound, does more real politics than geeks. I'm sure that we could do more, and I understand Dr. Lessig's frustration, but the real problem is that there aren't enough of us. Slashdot is the only community of geeks that is big enough even to cause a blip on media radar, and even then they think it's slashdot.com. On a good day, maybe 15% of the articles and responses are substantive and articulate. If all of those people got together and marched on Washington, the throng would be the size of a church tour group. There just aren't enough to make a substantial impact.

It also seems to me that as Dr. Lessig has chosen a career in law and has achieved a position of importance, he will tend to see that culture as the hammer to use on all nails, just as we may naively see a technical solution as the one to follow. He may be certain that the Supreme Court would do the right thing, but I'm not. I think they do a pretty good job, but we must occasionally set the waback machine to 1947, when all of the civil liberties lawyers were certain the Hollywood Ten would prevail. They didn't. They went to jail and their careers were essentially destroyed until some made a partial comeback in the 1970's.

In any event, especially if everything about politics and democracy be true and worthwhile, we need more people. Martin Luther King's speeches were nice, but as the TV commercials show, they wouldn't have meant much without the audience.

What we need is an amplifier. Arguing with other people fills the desire for an amplifier, but it has poor efficiency. There is another kind of amplifier, a way in which a small number of people or one can sway millions: it's called "art."

We need the equivalent of 1984, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Dr. Strangelove, or even M*A*S*H. Vehicles like that are one practical way for one person or a small group of people to present a vision. The only question is how to do it.

Neil Stephenson could do it, I think, as he is an established author with enough crossover appeal who understands the problem. Other authors with the ability seem to be either confined to the SF garrett or are not established. These days, it is harder than ever to become established as an author of fiction, and I'm no Neil Stephenson.

Plays don't seem fertile. In the past, I've seen two technically-oriented plays. Alan Turing, The Enigma was quite good but of course focused on the human drama (as everything ultimately must). Y2K focused on the Evil of those Bad Hackers, but this is not the reason it was bloody awful.

Fine art and sculpture have a limited use. I might imagine an installation that could make participants feel the problems, if there were a sufficiently talented artist. SIGGRAPH has had some pieces that have been promising. However, only a handful of people will ever experience it. Besides, the culture of this kind of art, to paraphrase Fred Brooks, has been given over to art as personal exorcism with little concern for the audience. The first thing most artists put in multimedia is their baby pictures.

Film could do it, but for obvious reasons this will not come out of Hollywood. Dark-horse independent films are not out of the question. Probably like many slashdotters, I carry a complete video studio in a knapsack, but I'm no Stanley Kubrick, either.

Computer games are interesting. I think there's a chance they will develop into an art form as important for the 21st century as movies were for the 20th. Of course the irony of using the computer to deliver a message about freedom through computers is a double-edged sword. However, there are a number of technological and storytelling issues to be addressed; I'm trying to address some of the technological ones with a project to become open source. Even then, some people will want a mindless shooter and that's it, but there at least will be some audience.

It's quite difficult to produce political art that does not come across as vapid polemic, but it may be a worthwhile effort. Supporting auxiliary infrastructure, such as independent press, might be worthwhile as well.

Re:We need to make art

[inerte]

Music!

It's one hell of easy and cheap form of art. You don't have to be the greatest guitarrist of the world (btw, he's called Jimi Hendrix) to generate a social impact. Just look at punk. Just look at grunge. Sex Pistols and Nirvana are awful bands, on a technical view of their music. Three chords only, c'mon...

But Seattle is probaly one of the most known cities in the world after Nirvana. The way they dress there, everyone around the world copied.

And equipment.. Spend 50$ on a guitar, forget about coding on your free time and practice for 2 hours daily during three months. You will be able to make music.

And everybody understand it, easily... I mean, who usually cares what Britney Spears sings? The lyrics?

Well, I am not her customer, so I care. Looks like it's possible to talk anything you want and someone, somewhere, will hear. Just write about these issues we cover here on Slashdot. Think none will want to listen about DMCA? Think again... You CAN phrase in a way people will understand.

Heck, The Beatles sang "I wanna hold your hand", which is one the most cheese things I have ever heard. Don't be afraid to be labeled as cheese on the beggining.

AND, producing music could be one of the reasons to maintain P2P alive.

Heck, this remembers me my guitar is sitting there for 4 days. Maybe it's time to write some verses about this.

Don't just support, Do.

[jkusters]

Other than that I really don't know, I'm not good at this type of thing, but we all need to learn. We need some leaders to step up and lead us in fighting this fight. And we need to give them our full support, and we need to gain the support of the public.

What we need is for some of us who "get it" to run for office. That way, there will be some technically knowledgeable people actually working on the legislation before the courts need to get involved. If enough /.ers get the gumption to run, some of us will get elected.

Writing and calling are easy. Sending money is even easier. Maybe it's time we start doing the hard things. It's not that hard to get involved, but it will take a lot of effort to make it to a place where we can make a difference. Start locally, aim nationally.

(And yes, I've started following my own advice. I may not make it far, but I feel I'm doing more than just writing/calling/sending money.)

JOhn.

Re:Don't just support, Do.

[thelaw]

ooh, ooh, i want to run for office too.

how old do you have to be to run in new jersey? hmmmm.

jon

At any rate...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Seuss was a crackhead. Mystical lands on specs of dust and all that hullabaloo.

Another suggested answer to Valenti Mouse

[abe ferlman]

"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."

Here's the answer to this question: imagine Disney held the copyright to Santa Claus. Imagine all the children's literature that would not have been written if someone owned Santa Claus! They are comparable children's icons in almost every way, except that one is associated weakly with religion and strongly with giving, and the other is associated weakly with childhood and strongly with the greed of the Disney Corporation.

Re:Another suggested answer to Valenti Mouse

[MarkLR]

That does not answer the question. The question was what harm does extending the copyright to Mickey Mouse do, no what harm could occur if Disney was the inventor of the Santa Claus character and we were extending the copyright on it.

Re:Another suggested answer to Valenti Mouse

[abe ferlman]

The harm is the opportunity cost of keeping Mickey Mouse locked up. All the great Mickey Mouse literature for children that was never made because of the fear of prosecution. Santa Claus demonstrates that children's icons released into the commons encourage innovation.

Simple economics.

Bryguy

Re:Another suggested answer to Valenti Mouse

[sulli]

Didn't Coca-Cola invent Santa Claus as we know him?

Loosing popular culture

[KjetilK]

I've been thinking about what we're loosing to extended copyrights. I'll just write something briefly about it.

Popular culture is designed to be short-lived. They put a record out, after a few weeks, it is gone. Nobody ever hears it anymore. Most of it is even recorded on media that doesn't last more than a few decades. By the time the copyright expires, there will exist no record of it, unless there is somebody out there who has some reason to make copies that'll last longer. Nowadays, even if there were, they wouldn't be permitted.

So, we're loosing our popular culture to the darkness of history. Never before in history has it been so easy to preserve our history for the future, yet, when future historians will look for our history, all they will find is a big, black hole. All this is due to copyrights. I think the future will not judge us lightly.

Ok, so what? Who cares about Brittney Spears anyway. Isn't it just as good that all is lost in the darkness?

Well, my girlfriend dragged me to the Opera (no, not the browser I'm using :-) ) to see Onegin, a ballet by Tchaikovsky. They even had this big-shot in the title role. Nowadays, the whole thing would have been done in three minutes and would have gone like this "Hey, keep your dirty fingers off my girlfriend! Yeah, sure, get your filthy hands off of her! What if I don't? I'll blow your brains out! Booom. Dead. Oh, she's sad." That's it. And I still wouldn't have bought the record. But this took two hours, and they were jumping around on the stage like mad. I laughed my ass off in the most tragic scenes where they shot at each other, it was just pathetic.

I have to conclude that this was the popular culture, analogous to Brittney Spears, of this past epoch. Some might disagree with this analysis of ballett, but that would only serve to underline my main point:

What if ballett had been lost due to copyright restrictions? That is the kind of harm today's copyright regime will probably do.

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[psamuels]

I suspect that, should any of this come to SCOTUS, that Scalia would actually be friendly to what we're trying to do. He's a strict constructionist.

(You mean strict consitutionist, or strict consitutionalist, or something.)

Yes, Scalia is my favorite Justice for this reason. "Legislating from the bench" is IMHO a bigger and worse problem than today's IP issues, although I feel pretty strongly about both.

Would that we had eight more justices like him - well, seven more, Justice Thomas is close enough.

fucking do your part, fatty

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article:

We could make progress in demanding that right if those who got it did something. If, for example, slashdot readers weren't such political slugs, something might happen. If more of you did something about this, whether spamming your Congressman, or giving money to those who resist this regulation (like the EFF), then we could resist this extremism.

I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

Excellent.

What a horrible example from such a bright person

[saint10]

We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime. The law targets illegal uses of technologies, not the technologies - at least where there is a legitimate and legal use of that technology. Yet because of our extremism when it comes to copyright law, we ban technologies that threaten copyright interests whether or not they have legitimate, independent uses.

I am astounded that LL would respond so foolishly. What a horrible comparison. 99.999% of content on file sharing services (kazaa, gnutella, et all) is copyrighted, and is being distributed illegally. If 99.999% of the bullets fired from handguns were used to murder people; governments, and society in general, would outlaw the production of handguns in a heartbeat.

Copyright quid pro quo

[rossjudson]

It occurs to me that extension of copyright has a direct cost that's quite real. Why does the government grant copyright? To encourage creativity, and the public exposition of that creativity. It helps drive the economy. But there is a cost that nobody discusses: Society/government bears the burden of enforcement. Why should the government agree, in perpetuity, to incur the cost of enforcing copyright law? What does greater society gain back in return for agreeing to enforce copyright? Not much, over a long term.

Most people think that there's some kind of right to have copyrights and patents. From where I stand, it just ain't so. Copyright and patents exist to further the aims of society, not to further the aims of individuals. Sometimes they coincide, and individuals benefit greatly.

Thanks for responding to my question

[bwt]

LL: I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.

Thanks for responding to my question, but I think you misunderstood it a bit. I am not apolitical, not inactive, not doing "nothing". Rather I have contacted my Congressmen, submitted comments to the Copyright Office, joined the EFF, and even helped write an Amicus brief submitted by Openlaw in the DVD case.

I've been heavily involved with the fight against the DMCA, and am looking back *after the fact* and wondering whether the process was capable of finding the voice of "The People".

Mine was **NOT** a question asking forgiveness for apathy because I have been anything but apathetic. I not "disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians" at all, because I am one. In fact, I have directed input toward all three branches of government. As a result each branch has issued opinions/statements that are unresponsive and incompetent at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.

For example, in my comment to the Copyright Office, I pointed out that in PREI v Columbia, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the "owner" of a movie had a first sale right to private performance. The Copyright Office issued a report which completely ignored this point, even though they were tasked by Congress with identifying the DMCA affects on first sale. I believe that they did so because the process was a futile exercise that achieved nothing other than allowing them to say that they had received public input.

Re:Thanks for responding to my question

[tester13]

I don't think the his comment was directed at you specificly as much as us as a community. While I of course commend your vigilance, I think his remarks regarding our "community" were correct.

We have much more power and money per capita then your average interest.

Re:Thanks for responding to my question

[lessig]

yea, sorry. I don't mean that there are no people in the slashdot circle who are active. obviously, some of the most important stuff has been done by the activists from rms to esr to eff. but I was speaking about the community. If this community did something as a community, it would have an effect.

software = book

[TMB]

Something occured to me while reading the answer to question 7 re: the doctrine of first sale.

What if one were to create a piece of software that was exclusively dedicated to displaying an original novel that was available in no other way? And then slapped an EULA on it that prevented resale? How would the courts treat that? Is there a way there of demonstrating that an EULA can take away rights that have been otherwise guaranteed?

[TMB]

Re:software = book

[einhverfr]

This is actually an interesting question. Normally, it is assumed that contracts (i.e. the EULA) can be used to abridge otherwise guaranteed rights. However, if the doctrine of first sale was interpreted in reponse to such licenses on books, then one might have a strong case for portions of the EULA being in violation of the law.

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[psamuels]

(Score: -1,Offtopic)

The Supreme Court justices appoint the President, not the other way around. People didn't learn anything from the last election.

(:

That's +1,Funny, but you don't really believe it, right? I mean, I don't mean to insult you, but some people do seem to believe it. What the Court did a year ago was essentially step in and say "You've been counting and recounting votes for a month now, the result hasn't changed, the sore loser has remained the loser, and this is getting ridiculous. Now please get on with the business of transitioning to a new Administration which can't be done overnight and should have started a month ago. Thank you and good night."

And those much-ballyhooed hand recounts of the whole state of Florida done by the media after the fact? Funny, W seems to have won anyway.

14 years?

[jjohnston]

From answer 2:

I am not against copyright. I think the copyright our framers gave us, for example (a term of 14 years, renewable once; granted only if you register; for limited kinds of work;

If I remember correctly, the constitution grants congress the right to set "limited terms". The first time congress did this, they chose 14 years. If the framers said 14 years, we would be in much better shape. The big problem for consumers, is they are not well represented in the process that got us from then to now.

Death of the econodwarf argument?

[hysterion]

Copyright law gives authors an incentive to produce.

OK, if I got a second chance to ask Lawrence Lessig a question, that would be:

Does this statement of yours signify that you don't agree, or never agreed, with Eben Moglen's econodwarf argument?

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[Wntrmute]

That's really amusing, since Lessig used to clerk for Scalia, and conciders him a mentor.

Scalia is an aid to our cause anyway. As a strict constructionist, I would expect him to take one look at "for limited times" in the Consitution, and throw current copyright law out on it's ear.

From where I am standing, Lawrence

[Pussy Is Money]

It is strange, Lawrence, that you should accuse us of apathy, when it has in fact been overzealous legislation that brought us here in the first place. IOW, you guys broke this stuff and botched it up -- not us.

And frankly I don't think there is any point left in playing the hero. The network, and people's expectations of the network, have already sunk so low that there is little left to fight for. Asymmetric transfer speeds are accepted as the norm rather than the exception, which enforces the few-to-many distribution model. Ports are being blocked on the network to prevent people from sharing files. Where that is not possible, service providers are brought to court and indicted. The W3C is increasingly irrelevant in an IE and Flash dominated world (XML? what a joke). Access providers may refuse to support Linux or any other non-MS, non-Apple platform, and there is no formal system in place by which you can convince them that your machine's TCP/IP stack actually works (there is no certification or 3rd party guarantee that you can get, there is no obligation for the access providers to, well, provide access). Even Slashdot nerds are clamouring to hold companies liable for security holes without realizing that this would mean only very big players could face the consequences of writing buggy software (i.e. all software).

Truly from where I am standing, Lawrence, why don't you just take the money and run.

Right out of Lessig's mouth:

[wideangle]

"The D.M.C.A. outlaws technologies designed to circumvent other technologies that protect copyrighted material. It is law protecting software code protecting copyright. The trouble, however, is that technologies that protect copyrighted material are never as subtle as the law of copyright. Copyright law permits fair use of copyrighted material; technologies that protect copyrighted material need not. Copyright law protects for a limited time; technologies have no such limit.

"Thus when the D.M.C.A. protects technology that in turn protects copyrighted material, it often protects much more broadly than copyright law does. It makes criminal what copyright law would forgive ...

"Authors have an important and legitimate interest in protecting their copyrights. The law should help authors where it can. But the law should not push its power beyond the protection of copyright, and the law should especially not criminalize activities that are central to research in encryption and security." --Lawrence Lessig, in a July 31, 2001 NY Times op-ed

Add a few bulleted examples of how the D.M.C.A. affects the typical web surfer's life and he'll sit up and listen.

code - speech

[Anonymous Coward]

in 12) Activism by coding, melquiades wrote:

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 seems to miss the main issue, which as I see it, is the claim that computer code is just "mechanical" and not expressive. I would suggest an argument more along these lines:

The brain is a machine. The brain doesn't run computer code, but if you somehow managed to create a computer simulation of the brain, that simulation would be a brain-machine made of computer code. Experts generally agree that it is probably just a matter of time until such a simulation is achieved.

Imagine that in the future there exists such a simulation, and that it can understand speech and produce new and meaningful speech just as well as any person can. If speech is protected, then surely any computer code comprising a brain simulation program that can think about ideas and produce speech based upon its thinking should be protected as well.

If it is possible to simulate a brain by means of computer code, if it is possible for code to be the author of meaningful speech, then how can one claim that code is not expressive, or expressive to a lesser extent than the speech it itself produces?

State of the Law in the US

[jazman_777]

From one of the questions:

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.

The sad truth is that much of law is like that. It's one corporation/corp-cluster using the coercive power of the government to squash competitors and threats. How to leverage the coercive power of the state? Influence the lawmakers, ie, bribe 'em!

So _the_ primary goal isn't for Congressmen to fill their coffers. There are _two_ primary goals: for the corporations to stifle competition and openness and all those good things; and for the Congressman to have their coffers filled. It's a devilish synergy; hand washes hand. And as usual, the people get screwed.

IronChef, see the post by Greyfox (linked here)

[wideangle]

Greyfox made an interesting post that might help you: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25189&cid=2739 024.

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is not technically possible without creating a law that goes against the law of physics / information theory.

First Amendment? Really?

[CaptainCarrot]

From Prof. Lessig's first answer:

And as there is no pro-speech benefit for this speech-supressing regulation, it should be struck under the First Amendment.

As a non-lawyer and someone who is not an expert in Constitutional law, it seems odd to me to hear copyrights discussed in a First Amendment context. The First Amendment did not exist when Article 1 Section 8 was drawn up, and its inconceivable to me that the authors of the Bill of Rights would have considered that any part of it contradicted what had been so recently ratified. Wouldn't the Constitutional foundation of copyrights suffice to strike down the Bono act?

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

I'd have thought that in those rare instances where the intent of a clause is made explicit, then a law purportedly enforcing the clause but acting contrary to the stated purpose would be unconstitutional. Since the effect of the act plainly inhibits, rather then promotes, the progress of the "useful arts" as your example illustrated, that's surely the case here.

The way I see it, good copyright law enhances the First Amendment by promoting free speech, and I can't really disagree that bad copyright law limits it. (And vice versa; free speech can only advance the "useful arts," never retard them. (Well, OK, maybe not considering some of the art that's being produced these days. But that's just a question of quality, not expression as such, and there's lots of gold amongst the dross.)) But I think the first violence here was against Article 1 Section 8, not the First Amendment.

Re:First Amendment? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason to believe that the authors of the Bill Of Rights tried to avoid any conflicts with existing constitution. For example, that soldiers cannot be quartered in private homes is a clear limitation on powers that otherwise are quite obviously avialable in the original constitution.

Given that, the First Amendment indeed should
completely trump the copyright clause where
speech and press are concerned - they came later
and so certianly do modify that which came before.
If the courts had got it right in the first place,
there would be no copyrights whatsoever since
they are clearly "laws prohibiting the freedom of the press".

Re:First Amendment? Really?

[CaptainCarrot]

It's precisely for this reason, I think, that the "fair use" doctrine on copyrighted materials was devised: to balance out the interests of copyright holders against the guaranteed rights of anyone who wanted to discuss the copyrighted material. This balance has worked remarkably well in the past, and it seems that it must have been devised satisfactorily. Now that legislation such as the Bono act and the DMCA are upsetting that balance, free speech is becoming circumscribed. But this is happening precisely in the context of creating works in the "useful arts", which means that current copyright law does not even fulfil the purpose of copyrights as defined by the Constitution.

But I'd prefer an informed opinion on the matter by an actual scholar in Constitutional law.

Answer to #1 ignores incentive

[MarkLR]

Lessig argues that extending copyright on previous works is wrong because the authors of the work are dead and cannot produce anymore. He ignores that fact that having an extended copyright increases the incentive for current artists to produce. Without incentive - either financially or knowing that your art will remain true to your vision nothing would get done any more.

Re:Answer to #1 ignores incentive

[opus]

Extending the length of the copyright term for newly produced works increases incentive, at least in theoery.

But maybe you'd care to explain how grandfathering in the compositions of George Gershwin does anything other than keep the money flowing to the heirs of Gershwin?

Re:Answer to #1 ignores incentive

[einhverfr]

Lessig argues that extending copyright on previous works is wrong because the authors of the work are dead and cannot produce anymore. He ignores that fact that having an extended copyright increases the incentive for current artists to produce. Without incentive - either financially or knowing that your art will remain true to your vision nothing would get done any more.

OK. But what about a friend of mine who wrote a book (hell, I wrote a book too that is also a good example). If it is published by a publisher and becomes unavailable after 3 years, they still own the copyright until I have been dead for a long while. COnsequentially, I will only have a publisher publish the book if I completely trust them. This is not an incentive for me to have it published. Hence the copyright law is self-defeating.

I would argue that ANY copyright law that extends beyond the life of the author is in violation of at least the wording of not the spirit of the consitution.

Re:The source

[El_Smack]

Man, you people are WAY to dependant on smiley's to tell when people are having some fun. :) ;) ;0

I actually support DRM

[Sgs-Cruz]

You know what, the coming era of DRM is not really going to be that bad. Let me explain...

First of all, I want to get one thing straight. Stealing music is illegal. Whether you disagree with the compensation given to the musicians or whatever, when you steal an MP3, they get nothing. The general consensus on /. has been that the people here do not use MP3 (or whatever) file format for pirating music (whether they are lying or not, I don't know).

Such that this is, I think that Digital Rights Managment, properly implemented, could be a great thing. This article gives a good overview of how it might be implemented. Basically, it organizes information into a WORK, an EXPRESSION of that work, a MANIFESTATION of that expression, and an ITEM as a part of that manifestation. For example (the example they give on the page) the work could be The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco. The expressions of that work could include the original, an english translation, etc. The manifestations, say, of the english translation expression could be the book and the book-on-tape. The items of the "book manifestation" could include an actual hardcover book or an e-version from some website.

When you buy something, you have digital rights for either the work or any of the sub-levels. Owning the rights to the expression (the english translation) would get you all of the manifestations and items below that. Of course, most people would only own rights to one or a couple "items".

Now, the main problem with this is that DRM-protected files won't work on legacy hardware. I agree that this is a big problem. (You hear! I agree!) But, I'm interested to hear, discounting this problem, would DRM really be so bad according to you all? If you bought a car-stereo, a portable stereo, a home stereo, and computer running LinuxDRM (or WindowsDRM), and they were all registered to you, you could buy "Metallica - Master of Puppets (Live with the San Francisco Orchestra).DRM.mp3" and it would run on all your DRM-registered items. If you sold one of those stereos, the new owner would want to change the registration in order to play his MP3s, and you could keep copies on everything you want. You could keep backups on every stinking computer in North America, as they would only work for things registered to you.

Now, I can see a couple of problems right away. Hackers would crack the DRM in about 20 seconds from the first one landing in St. Petersburg, and this would be much easier to implement with a central registration system (which in my opinion is unacceptable, but there are ways around it). Any other thoughts?

Wow, that went a lot longer than I thought it would. Note that all opinions are mine and I take responsibility for them.

-Cruz

Re:I actually support DRM

[ewhac]

First of all, I want to get one thing straight. Stealing music is illegal.

So is driving faster than 65 MPH. What's your point?

Such that this is, I think that Digital Rights Managment, properly implemented, could be a great thing.

First off, let me correct your terminology. The term "Digital Rights Management" is a smokescreen, intended to deceive the public. Its proper name is Copy Protection. The free market long ago made the decision that Copy Protection subtracts value from digital media, and is not wanted. The software industry, by and large, accepted this, and went on to make trillions of dollars. But now that older media publishing companies are wading into the digital age, they want to re-hash this mess all over again. It's the same basic idea, except this time they've given it the name, "Digital Rights Management."

I encourage you, do not go along with the semantic dodge, and call this stuff by its true name, Copy Protection. The computing consumer already understands what it is, and what it means for his/her investment in digital works.

Secondly, I can assure you that copy protection, by definition, cannot be implemented fairly. The taxonomy you relate is certainly interesting, meriting further study, perhaps as a basis for new legal frameworks. However, copy protection technology is fundamentally unfair. At its core, it presupposes that uses not authorized beforehand by the copyright holder are prima facie unlawful and prohibited.

As Professor Lessig correctly points out, this is pure bullshit.

But, I'm interested to hear, [ ... ] would DRM really be so bad according to you all? If you bought a car-stereo, a portable stereo, a home stereo, and computer running LinuxDRM (or WindowsDRM), and they were all registered to you, you could buy "Metallica - Master of Puppets (Live with the San Francisco Orchestra).DRM.mp3" and it would run on all your DRM-registered items.

Just so. But in this wonderful world you espouse, where is my right to create a DRM-registered player?

Right now, I can go out and write a visualizer for WinAmp, or XMMS, or Cthugha, or any other music player I care to name, take the digital audio data -- no matter its source -- and convert it into moving visual forms and images. In a world of copy protection, I would not be allowed access to the audio data to create those visualizations because, technically, there's nothing preventing me from, rather than visually transforming the data, just saving it out to disk instead.

So, to write my harmless little display hack, I have to go to the RIAA and fellate some executive to get his permission, in the form of an "authorized player" key, to do so. Not only will this likely cost me thousands of dollars (assuming they don't reject me out of hand as not being a "credible developer"), but they will insist on code audits, precise download and usage statistics, and probably a key renewal fee. Moreover, after doing all this, if I fail to offer the proper ongoing tribute, or someone offers them more money, my "authorized player" key can be revoked, and all copies of my visualizer will stop working. My speech -- in the form of my code -- can be remotely and unaccountably silenced at whim.

All for a fscking display hack.

Now, generalize this to all forms of data meriting "protection": Music, software, text, Web page graphics, user interface layout, font outlines, Quake 3 Arena models, etc. It is not difficult to imagine that "permission" and "authorization keys" will be required to write any piece of software, and that obtaining same will be monsterously expensive, affordable only to wealthy corporations.

Sorry, I'm not buying this. I don't buy for one femtosecond that this level of "protection" is necessary to effect commerce and make fortunes in the digital age. Hell, Bill Gates became the richest man in the world selling stuff that end-users could copy at whim.

These reasons, among others, are why I've arrived at the conclusion: Copy protection is fundamentally unethical, and antithetical to the nature of computing. Copy protection measures as you describe will serve to kill innovation, not spur it.

Schwab

Re:I actually support DRM

[benb]

> The term "Digital Rights Management" is a
> smokescreen, intended to deceive the public. Its
> proper name is Copy Protection.

No. Its proper name is "Use Restriction". There is, to my knowledge, no copy protection that doesn't also give the one controlling copying also control over the normal use, i.e. playing. Every play, even in the analog world, is a copy (e.g. the music exists on the vinyl and in the electric or air). That's where SSSCA et al root.

That's why there can't be a true open-source player with proper copy protection.

And the "use restriction" this is also what really scares me about "copy protection". Imagine every play having to be "licenced" by a server on the internet. Byebye privacy.

The Target is in Sight???

[3seas]

Haven't yet read the 12.6 printed page response to questions from Lawrence Lessig yet, but will. I do however, understand th ejist of what he is on about and with that in mind I post here links to two other comments I have made today to other (but related) articles.

Content vs. Tech faction - comment and The Internet Shifts East - comment

I do believe there may be a facet of the big picture Lawrence is missing, as is most all the rest of those involved. How do you remove "the commons" from language use?

Re:The Target is in Sight???

[3seas]

Now that I have read Lessigs responces, I got to wondering about what he said regarding taking action. And it occured to me that Slashdot has had absolutely no effort on the part of posters to write anything, right? Is that is why Slashdot doesn't keep comments past a given time or makes it difficult to access them.

What I'm getting at is this:

This comments posters have made are worth something, otherwise the posters wouldn't have taken the time to make them. But what are they really worth?

Who is getting what value from the postings?

Certainly not much value to the posters, there doesn't seem to be any sort of archive accesable by the posters.

But what if some party wanted to sample the market for opinions and data mine for ideas?

Certainly this is not a value the posters are benefiting from. So who is?

What about these issues Lessig wants the slashdot poster to do something about?

When you go into a court room, what is it that you present? Talk? opinions, bias, truth? What is the difference between the sum total weight of which the posters produce than the basis of arguement given in a court room?

Seems to me that companies back down when they get a negitive reaction to something they are doing that their customer don't like. That to me seems to have more power than going into a court room, in fact so much power that the matter is resolved before a court dates are even considered.

Perhaps what Lessig and EFF and the likes need to be doing is getting laws passed that require such open publication of matters that take public and consumer rights away. I mean, isn't that the real issue and problem to address, Informing the public?

Seems to me being here is somehwat preaching to the quire, where it ain't gonna really do much good but get the quire to present possible opposition so that those wanting to places more constraints on us can create a better arguement for what they want. In enough time (not long) there is no proof that anyone or many said anything at all thru slashdot (far as I can tell).

Maybe Lessig shouldn't be bitching about our actions but rather recognizing the value of our actions and helping us to protect them and even use them to defend ourselves? Freedom of speech you know!

And I guess that is why if you look back far enough, nobody has said anything here on slashdot.

Maybe I'm wrong, so where is the archive that I can reasonable find the first comment I made on slashdot?

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[fmaxwell]

I mean, I don't mean to insult you, but some people do seem to believe it.

I think you, like so many, were taken in by the three county "limited" recount that the AP reported on. In full (unofficial) recounts of the whole state of Florida, Gore was shown to be the victor.

Besides, it has been conclusively shown that voter error due to confusing butterfly ballots and misleading instructions cost Gore 15,000-25,000 votes (source: USA Today, 06/18/2001, Florida voter errors cost Gore the election) Even Pat Buchanon conceded that most of the 3,600 votes that he got in Palm Beach County were intended for Gore (more than enough to give Gore the win).

More facts that you may not have known:

20 Florida counties NEVER did the machine recount required by Florida law when an election is that close. That's 1.8 million votes.

Katherine Harris listed 4,000 voters as felons when they weren't. And example is Leon County where she gave the Supervisor of Elections 590 names of "felons", of which only 33 were actual felons.

In a National review poll published in November of 2001, 32 percent polled say Bush won on a technicality, while 15 percent say he stole the election.

Don't be too quick to claim that Bush won outright. The whole thing stinks and none of us will ever know the whole truth. The only thing that we know for certain is that substantially more Americans across the country voted for Gore than did for Bush.

Re: NO tax credit

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not get tax credits (deductions) for giving to Political Action Committees. That is why the EFF can't campaign for or against political candidates.

My favorite part

[Salamander]

because of our extremism when it comes to copyright law, we ban technologies that threaten copyright interests whether or not they have legitimate, independent uses

This is my favorite part not because it's the most correct, but because it's the most thought-provoking (for me). It's like the doctrine of "substantial non-infringing use" stood on its head; I'm not sure where that leads us, but I'm sure I'll enjoy puzzling it out.

Re:What a horrible example from such a bright pers

[abe ferlman]

hrm... not as bad an example as you think.

How about assault rifles? They have no legitimate uses outside of crimes (and impressing your friends, I suppose). Ditto for armor piercing bullets. Now, think about file sharing services more broadly- ftp and http protocols, and think of kazaa, gnutella, etc as the assault rifles of the file sharing world.

But in both cases, there's something missing. We need assault rifles to defend against invading foreign forces and a possible slip into outright tyranny on the part of our government. We need decentralized file sharing services to keep information from being owned by immortal corporations.

LL knows his game. Charleton Heston and Larry Flynt need to kiss and defend the whole bill of rights, not just one of the first two amendments each.

Bryguy

we're hoping that you'll save us

[liquid_schwartz]

Ironically, many of us in the US are hoping that since our system is past corrupt that the foreign countries will save us by keeping their laws sane. Hasn't worked always but sadly it may be our best bet.

Followup Thought

[GrEp]

After sending out the electronic versions of my letters I noticed that every one of the congressmen was advertising for intern positons.

CALL TO ALL STUDENTS!!!

Apply to an intern position in your congressman's office. A friend of mine did it and he said it was a great expirence. Not only can you work to help your congressmen go through their piles of mail, you can explicitly weed out all the anti-DMCA letters to show them. So all student's out there wanting to help their country and stop copyright abuse apply for an intern position!!! We will be deeply in debt to you.

Why Not ?

[Intrinsic]

But we should not be calling for the repeal of all copyright. We should be calling for a balanced and limited form of copyright - much like the right of our framers - that gives artists the right to earn a living, without giving copyright hoarders the power to veto innovation.

I am not a lawyer but would anyone care comment on what kind of damage would it cause if copyright law was appealed?

It seems to me in the digital age, its not need anymore.

wow!

[7-Vodka]

what a great interview and what a smart guy he is! It's great to see that we have people like him on OUR side because if he was on the other team :(

Re:wow!

[Psinoside]

If he was on the other team he wouldn't have such good arguments (from our point of view anyway). I had this problem with debates in school, if I was on the side I agreed on, my arguments flowed like truth. If I was on the opposite side, the best I could do was to be the devil's advocate for my team. Its hard to be on the wrong side and not sound ignorant.

Superb--let's follow-up

[Sara Chan]

This was an incredible interview. So, I challenge each and every Slashdot reader to something to support the cause. Anything. NOW.

For myself, I've just sent a copy of Lessig's latest book to Tony Blair (British PM). Maybe someone in his office will read some of it. Maybe it will help.

Do any one thing. Write a letter to a newspaper. Send the EFF money. Be creative! There are lots and lots of extremely creative people here. Let's go!

AARP more powerful than black lobby

[alexhmit01]

The black lobby sucks because it is 90% vote Democratic. The Democratic party plays lip service to the black caucus and other black special interest groups.

Hell, the Jewish population, maybe 1/6th the size of the Black population, has as much if not more influence. The Jewish population votes in larger numbers, and splits (I think around 65%-35% Democratic). The Democratic party has to pay attention or a portion swinging to the GOP can hurt them in New York and Florida because of reasonable sized Jewish populations.

You don't want to be chronically Party X. You want to have money to "participate" in government, and have a voting block that you can swing.

Politicians (particularly in my native state of Florida) cater to the AARP because it splits. They know that if the elderly split 50-50, they can ignore them if they don't piss them off. Get the AARP pissed off and see them fo 80%-20% for your opponent, and you are out of a job.

If a Republican pisses off black voters, they aren't hurt much. The only way for black groups to affect things is to get out the vote. Jeb Bush alienated the black community. Voting Democratic didn't matter. Getting the black vote out in Florida however, nearly cost his brother the White House. (Blacks are roughly 8% of Florida's poplation, normally around 6% of the vote, and something like 12% of the 2000 presidential race).

Being a split group that will swing is FAR more powerful. Without a get out the vote drive (the elderly vote reliably as is), the AARP is STILL able to swing things because they have potential power.

Alex

Re:AARP more powerful than black lobby

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with talking about the AARP as a political orgainization is that 'on the ground' most of their members consider them a discount club. (Maybe different in FL).

The elderly have lots of political swing. The AARP claims to represent the elderly by buying names with rental car coupons. That doesn't make the AARP political in itself - there's no evidence that the organization can move the vote one way or another.

What we need is ELF - Electronic Lobby Foundation

[HiroProtagonist]

What we need is ELF - Electronic Lobby Foundation


A mirror group to the EFF that is not a non-profit you could donate to for purposes of Lobbying Congress for protection of our online rights. They could have a charter that would state exactly what Lessig said here:

"showing the rest of the world something much more fundamental about the network. Not just how code is speech, but also:

(1) how the architecture of the Internet built a set of values,

(2) how those values are fundamentally linked to the most important freedoms in our tradition, and

(3) how changes in that architecture of the net could undermine those values.

Find ways to demonstrate how the architecture built a commons, and how that commons induced innovation: That's the stuff that lawyers, and politicians, don't get."

Sound good? Who wants in?

Re:Justice Scalia

[dmarcov]

The real problem there is that Justice Scalia is not /actually/ a strict constructionalist. He tends to use that label for himself and his point of view when the action is in favor of the conservative idealogy. He has no problem with violating the "Freedom of " amendments of the constitution when it suits the overall goal.

I know I'm risking a flamebait or troll for this one, but I just can't in good conscience let someone call Scalia a strict constructionalist when that is merely a cover for his agenda. There is nothing wrong philosophically with strict constructionism -- there is something wrong with giving that cloak of legitimacy to someone with an agenda to push forward. If you want see some interesting history, take a look at what he said during his confirmation hearings about such things as a "right to privacy".

Idiot == you

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are an idiot.

Repeat after me: Copying is *not* stealing.

No matter how much you *want* it to be, it's still not stealing.

You see, for something to be stolen means that you have to deprive someone of it somehow. Making a copy of something does not fit the criterea.

You must be really feeble minded to buy into the IP cartels bullshit telling you that copying is stealing.

one more Canadian supports the EFF....

[Lawmeister]

I just used some of the proceeds from selling Diablo 2 items (yes, I'm one of those bastards ;) to donate to the EFF... via a PayPal balance so the EFF doesn't get hit with a big % take from PayPal.

Here's the link to help:
https://www.eff.org/support/donate-cc.html

Don't be lazy - copy and paste it now!

Re:Copyleft through Copyright?

[pimproot]

Terms to think about:
"Peace-keeping"
"National defense"
"Fighting fire with fire"

Consider the policeman who has to speed to pull over a reckless driver, or deploy tear gas in a riot. To assert that opponents of copyright should not be allowed to employ the weapons of copyright as a means to an end seems somewhat skewed.

Re:derivative works

[Anonymous Coward]

As LL says, the point is to find a good balance, not complete control/no control. The control side is getting ridiculous. As an example, at a recent outdoor exhibit of Calder's sculpture here in SF, all photos and sketching were forbidden because all visual representations of these publically known scuptures are controlled. So amateur artists like me, as well as tourists wanting a pic of the kids in front of the pointy donut, were forbidden -- not because (as in most museums) the photo flash would damage the artwork, but because of control over the image. So I can't create my own image for any reason, but I'm welcome to pay money for an "official" boring postcard shot of the same scupture. That to me is overly extreme control.

Contract law is the key

[mpawlo]

Larry,

Great insights as ever. I will do my best to question authority as always .-)

Lessig:
But that will require something more than a life of quibbling on Slashdot. And so far, you've not shown you're up to very much more.

So we're basically idiots. So what does that make you participating in this forum?
Seriously, I don't think you can regard Slashdot readers as a collective in the way you want to. Some slashdot:ers will always be trolls and nothing will change that. Others will learn and in return teach their friends. I don't think that it's a problem and the discussion about slashdot:ers not beeing active enough is not very useful.

I am very pessimistic about changing the copyright terms through legislation. However, we have a very nice full-scale experiment on copyright going on here. It's run by Richard M Stallman, Eben Moglen, Eric S Raymond, Bruce Perens, Tim O'Reilly, Steve Ballmer and their peers. Through contract, intellectual property will change. I am convinced that Richard M Stallman and his peers (including Microsoft) will substantially change our view of copyright and the way we create, develop and do business with works.

In the future, even Microsoft's code will be open. It will happen because the customers demand it--learning the lesson taught by Stallman and yourself--and it will be regulated through contract, not through legislation.

Code is law, indeed. So is contract.

Regards

Mikael

Overruled

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a dumbass.

But the "idiot power" won't listen to me

[ehintz]

We need to relearn this lesson - in general, and in the context of the Internet. You guys could help teach that lesson. Indeed, only technologists have the credibility to speak reason to this idiot power.

I marched on the streets in protest of Sklyarov. I spoke to many people, telling them who he was, why he was imprisoned, and why the DMCA was unconstitutional. I talk to my coworkers, and even run a small mailing list of 50 or so to whom I frequently include items regarding our freedom. I went to a local gig for an up and coming group, whose music I found over Napster, and spoke to the members of the group, explaining how my attendance and purchase of CDs and merch was directly attributable to Napster. I am the teacher. But the "idiot power" won't come to class. When I speak to them, they send me form letters telling me that Dmitry is accused of violating the DMCA. No shit, sherlock. I would love to be the voice which teaches that lesson, but how can I teach when the student does not want to learn? This is why I feel disenfranchised and apathetic. Where do I go to find that larger audience? How do I make the Idiot Power listen to me, let alone care about what I have to say?

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like when Scalia picked the winner of the presidential election? You might agree with the results, but the methods were 'from the bench', all right.

Mobile Phone Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy GPRS or 3rd generation phones if they lock you out of the internet.

If you can't send an IP packet to any other IP address on the internet then it's not open, it's not on the internet.

There will probably be a major effort by the phone companies to lock you into "their" intranet/WAN because they think they'll make more money. (I'm not certain but I think I read that WAP tried this, I don't know about Japan's and Holland's i-mode either sorry).

Explain to your friends why they should not buy such a phone if that happens (no E-mail, no ICQ, no PC to Mobile to PC file transfer, no Open source netgames some hacker wrote or any combination of the above).

End to end open connectivity is needed, just one way communication is the same as TV. Just communication between devices on the same mobile network is not internet either.

If everyone on SlashDot convinced their friends this way then you would be doing something for net freedom.

Let's hope it's not needed though :)

Christmas Gift

[GigsVT]

Well, I've been putting it off for a while now. I havn't joined the EFF yet. I think I gave them a little money a long time ago, but I can't even remember when.

My christmas gift this year, to my son, to the world, is a donation of $20 to the EFF. To think what we could accomplish, if copyright was reasonable, the things that would be available out there....

I suggest you do the same. Most people here make $20 US in one hour of work. One hour out of the 2000 hours you worked this year. That's all it would take, to give our voice real power.

Like open source, it only works if people like us give a little back. Even if you don't agree with everything the EFF does, they do always address the most important things, and that is what matters.

If you have a good paying job, do it now, quit putting it off, it's our quiet revolution, our secret cause that most will never be aware of, but will reap the benefits of when we succeed.

The time is now.

Re:Christmas Gift

[lessig]

very cool, Gigsvt. thanks.

Re:Christmas Gift

[3seas]

What are we really getting in return?

Is it right that a corporation can own an idea?

[Froze]

It seems to me that a big part of the problem lies in the concept that an idea can be bought and sold as a commodity. Don't get me wrong, I think that an individual should have the right to prosper from a creative effort. Note, I said individual. Corporate entities do not have ideas, people do. A person, or persons, should have the right to hold their idea as property or lease it to a corporate entity, but that creative effort cannot be sold, it belongs to them, and them alone. When the owner dies (or sooner if they choose) that idea should pass in to the public domain, since its creator no longer exists.

The whole concept of owning an idea is rediculus. Owning an idea implies that someone else could be charged just for thinking it. A totally stupid concept.

EXACTLY what Lessig is talking about

[crucini]

This particular riff on the GPL has been repeated thousands of times on slashdot. And while we discuss whether the GPL is truly consistent with our principles, somewhere lobbyists are meeting with a legislator and pitching a new law that will horrify us. If for every time someone posted a deep comment about the GPL, he had instead tossed ten dollars into a bucket, the bucket would contain enough money to buy at least one legislator.

UK EFF?

[fyonn]

simple question, is there a british or even european EFF or equivalent that is campaigning for our rights in these arena's on this side of the pond?

dave

cheek to cheek

[wfrp01]

Or as LL likes to say "end to end".

Larry, you're a lawyer. Not a geek. You wannabe, but you're not. Appreciate your help, but let's get a couple of things clear here.

Yes, the IP protocol is designed to enable unfettered best effort communication between two endpoints.

Sometimes that's not good enough. Existing Internet protocols do not handle streaming media gracefully, because of their content agnostism. You call that an ethical coup. I call that a flaw. Handling streaming media gracefully requires the cooperation of intermediaries. You may call that unfortunate, but it's true.

All I'm saying here is let's base our objectives on facts, not pie-in-the-sky idealism. Your job is to make sure that the people who do, who must, have control of the pipelines are unable to abuse their privileged position. There's nothing wrong with privilege, just abuse of privilege.

Re:cheek to cheek

[lessig]

true enough, whatever I wannabe. but nothing hangs on end-to-end always being "good enough." sometimes it isn't good enough. the only point I've been pushing is that as with any value, we should compromise as little as possible when compromise is necessary. e.g., different QoS systems are differently end-to-end compatible. That should give us a basis to choose among them.

more fundamentally, however, I completely agree that we can achieve the values of end-to-end without there being, technically, an end-to-end network. The telephone network wasn't end-to-end, but with careful common carrier like regulation, it was as good as if it was.

Re:cheek to cheek

[wfrp01]

I completely agree that we can achieve the values of end-to-end without there being, technically, an end-to-end network.

Oh.

And uhg. I tipped a couple too many last night and then decided to post to /. I apologize for my acerbic tone here and elsewhere.

Best wishes.

Exactly!

[mscout1]

Lawrence Lessig has said in words the exact sentiments that I have been feeling in my gut for a long time! I think we should have him on slashdot more often.

How to make a difference

[einhverfr]

This quote seems to contradict itself. We can bitch and moan to Congress about our disagreement with copyright, but face it, those who get it are by far in the minority. Even if a good lot of us complained, the future of creativity and innovation is still sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder because that bid still outweighs the voices of the few.

Here is how we need to make a difference. We need to write essays and encourage discussion of the issues. We heed to help America find liberty again. This is a battle which will only be won by educating people, and whether that is one person at a time or whether it is an entire group at once, we must always continue and always move on. I say, 90% of our resources for the fight should be spent on education and 10% on litigation.

So where to start? Start by researching the history of copyright and patent law and educate yourself on the histoy behind the laws as well as the arguments used to uphold them. Then demonstrate that these laws are:
A: Contrary to the mandate of the U.S. Constitution and
B: Supported by fundamentally flawed arguments.

That is how we can kill the DMCA, the copyright extensions, etc. We kill them by showing other people the harm that they cause.

Hmmm....

[einhverfr]

How insightful. The line, however, gets blurred when I say that a legitimate useage constitutes sharing copyrighted works for free because it means I have access to more works that I would not otherwise have access to which I could then be making MORE purchases of copyrighted material for full-quality versions (which I do believe is true in most mp3/online digital works cases), versus someone who finds this to be the exact copyright violation that is harmful to a company or individual.

Hmmmm.... I think that you are lookign at it the wrong way. Copyright law historically did not exist for the purpose of making the CEO of AOL-Time-Warner richer but rather for the purpose of enhancing the American culture by bringing more work into the commons that could be used as a basis for art in the future. Historically it did this through 2 methods:
1: Giving an artist a limited monopoly for a limited time. (Limited time clause is effectively dead.)
2: Encouraging fair use of the copyrighted material (concept died with the passing of the DMCA).

The idea is that a ballanced copyright system benefits everyone if it is done right. Not just AOL Time-Warner, Microsoft and the likes, but the lives of every American because our culture is enhanced!

The current problem is that copyright law right now does a very bad job of living fulfilling its mission. Therefore I think that sharing music should be considered legitamate in the exception of copyright law only if it can be genuinely demonstrated to help copyright law fulfill its goal of enriching our culture (I believe that this is the case, BTW).

idealism is nothing

[blisspix]

An excellent article.

What I want to know however, is how many /. readers actually have to deal with copyright law on a regular daily basis?

as much as i want to be an idealist i have to deal with reality since i work in a broadcasting library.

i believe in paying for radio licenses to broadcast music on air, but not to be double charged to stream that same music online.

i believe in allowing derivative works for art or academic purposes, but not so that someone can copy software.

i believe in making people jump through hoops to ensure that the news and materials they are using is cleared, but not having to write to copyright owners to ask if i can use a quote from paragraph 3.

copyright can be an evil, horrible beast, yet it is an essential thing to have to ensure that we respect the works of others.

AARP dominates Florida politics

[alexhmit01]

Well, with a large elderly population, Florida is heavily influenced by their vote.

The AARP is powerful not because of an ability to deliver votes, but there ability to get the word out.

No, they can't influence trade policy with China, but on issues related to the elderly, they are listened to. If they send out maillers to their members about issues that will affect them, it affects (or is believed to affect) their voting.

The scare tactics that are pulled with the elderly in Florida is shocking and apalling. They are lied to, tricked, etc., and because they mostly live in isolated "retirement" communities, their interaction with the rest of the world is limited to their families. The AARP can influence things and accomplishes things.

In a "Geeks for freedom" movement, you would be likely to be 1 million strong, and even worse, that would be spread out across the country (1 million people in 1 state is useful, in 50, well, less power) but could still be influential.

It would involve people voting in a certain direction and otherwise mobilizing manpower. A funded PAC or 2 wouldn't hurt either.

Alex

GMAFB

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I don't get it. You don't agree with the political views of LL, RMS, etc.? Fine, then don't do anything to fight for the freedoms they're fighting for. That's your right, and you should do what makes you the most comfortable. But pls. don't come crying to us if things don't turn out to your liking.

In other words, if you don't get involved in the process, you have no right to bitch about the results.

You must be joking.

[Euphonious Coward]

John Dean (Nixon's White House counsel) revealed that the true definition of a "strict constructionist" judge, as quoted by current Chief Justice Rehnquist, is "one who favors criminal prosecutors over criminal defendants, and civil rights defendants over civil rights plaintiffs". He should know, he is one.

In other words, all the rhetoric about preserving the constitution is a cynical smokescreen. For lots more, do a search on Google for "strict constructionist definition John Dean Rehnquist appointment".

Antonin Scalia is no friend of civil rights, or of anything but the favor of the rich or well-connected. People who have been fooled are in good company, but there's no excuse any more. The truth is out.

Robert Heinlein and Activism for Nerds

[Guil Rarey]

Heinlein wrote a book _Take_Back_Your_Government_. Think of it as the HOWTO for political activism, although it's several rev's out of date. Kludging television onto the political kernel really screwed things up. Remember the Moral Majority? Remember how much influence they wielded? (Still do some places - hell in Kansas they managed to overthrow 100+ years of biology!) The hard core committed Moral Majority was in fact a very small minority of this country, yet they wielded tremendous influence. Why? Discipline, focus and effective lobbying of politicians, especially at the lower levels. It can be done.

Re:Robert Heinlein and Activism for Nerds

[Happy go Lucky]

Heinlein wrote a book _Take_Back_Your_Government_. Think of it as the HOWTO for political activism, although it's several rev's out of date

Several revisions? Several DECADES!

When you buy your copy, make sure you get the edition with Jerry Pournelle's commentary. The commentary is probably more applicable to today's politicking than the rest of the book.

Remember the Moral Majority? Remember how much influence they wielded? (Still do some places - hell in Kansas they managed to overthrow 100+ years of biology!)

First of all, you've got a misconception there. The KS BoE removed evolution/origins from the mandatory curriculum. They did not mandate creationist nonsense. Nor the so-called "scientific creationism" crap. Nor did they open the door for equal time. Nor did they prohibit teachers from teaching evolutionary biology or singing praises of Stephen Jay Gould. They simply removed the entire question from the mandatory curriculum and dumped the school standards onto the local school boards.

And you've hit on something. Just about every law that can send you to jail is state or municipal. It's your city commission, county board, and state assembly that you should be watching most of all. You should be paying attention to your county/district judges and remembering them when the judicial retention elections come around (like they do in most states). You should be watching your county school board and your zoning board. You should be able to explain why you plan to vote for one candidate for Sheriff over another. Is your nearest public library part of city government or is it part of a special tax district? Who's on the special district board? Who is the chief of police in your city and were you watching when the city manager selected him? Do you even know where your property tax goes? (If you live near Denver, guess how much of your property taxes go to pay for the Donkeys' new stadium. They're the biggest welfare queens in Colorado)

In other words, Congress is 90% irrelevant on their best days. It's the local electionsand the local entities with the real power to screw up your life if you don't watch them.

Exponential fees preserve it

[epeus]

How about this: 10 years free then 1$ for the 11th year, 2$ for the 12th; $4 for the 13th etc.

You can prepay any number of years, but if you don't pay, it falls into public domain. Thus Disney can keep Mickey for 70 years, but only by paying $260, or about a billion dollars. And it keeps doubling.

This way, only works which publishers believe are enormously valuable will be kept out of the public domain, and the law of large numbers will put paid to them in time.

Think of it as a very regressive tax on copyright hoarding.

Re:Exponential fees preserve it

[epeus]

That should be $2^60 not $260 - slash filtered out my superscript tag.

Re:Copyleft through Copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

To assert that opponents of copyright should not be allowed to employ the weapons of copyright as a means to an end seems somewhat skewed.

Copyleft goes beyond what would happen if copyright law was repealed -- it adds additional obligations. If copyright law were merely repealed, I could still distribute binary-only software. You could copy, use, decompile, and disassemble it to your heart's content, but you'd only get my source if I chose to distribute it. The GPL goes to great pains to require me, with the full force of the law, courts, and police, to distribute my source.

Re:I can't wait to see a vacancy on the Supreme Co

[psamuels]

You mean like when Scalia picked the winner of the presidential election? You might agree with the results, but the methods were 'from the bench', all right.

First of all, that wasn't "legislating from the bench". It was deciding a specific issue at hand. It is much worse when a court decides, out of the blue as it were, that something is or isn't Constitutional, when the Constitution itself doesn't say anything one way or the other. You know what I mean, I bet. Some federal judges seem to interpret the term unconstitutional to mean "unfair, in my book, and guess what, I'm a federal judge so my book is what counts". The famous Miranda decision in the 1960s is a good example. You might agree with the doctrine of testimony being inadmissible in criminal court if it was obtained without the defendent being informed of certain of his rights -- I happen to think it's a pretty good rule -- but to claim that the Constitution somewhere mandates this doctrine is pure fabrication. The "Miranda Rule" should have been legislated ... by actual legislators, state and/or federal.

Second, what was the Court supposed to do in December 2000? Ignore the Gore lawsuit entirely? That's an implicit decision in favor of the lower court's decision, you know. By your reasoning it is "picking the winner".

Corollary: the Court (including Justice Scalia) had to make some judgment. Either way they were interfering with the Florida election commission procedure - either to uphold it (as they did) or strike it down. Insofar as this meddling can be considered "legislating", they didn't have much choice.

Third, picking the winner of the election was, or should have been, a secondary consideration, or rather, no consideration at all. I don't claim to know the hearts of the Justices, but they should have been deciding on a mere procedural matter which just happened to have major practical implications. Obviously, there had to be a winner and a loser - that's how elections work. It does not follow that the Court "picked the winner".

Insist in timely response!

[goldfndr]

That's easy, just require the publishers to turn around orders within a month or so. If the work is truly in print, no problem.

Wil Wheaton

[DreamingReal]

The key to our success would be if a strong commercial actor became deeply invested in freedom.

Don't worry Larry - Wil Wheaton is on it.

Using myth as fact discredits your arguments.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime.

The point is valid. But the statistic is bogus. You are echoing a big-lie propaganda sound bite as if it were a fact, when the true numbers are actually more than an order of magnitude lower.

Judges (and others, both in the general public and in policy-making offices) are becoming aware of the actual numbers. So continued use of this lie in arguments will tend to discredit the rest of your argument.

It is also a hotbutton issue, with the opposing view held by members of a subculture which constitutes about half the voting population. So by using a well-known big-lie from one side of this unrelated debate you risk instantly alienating half your audience.

Ten per day comes out to 3650 per (non-leap) year.

According to the National Safety Council, 230 children under the age of 15 were killed in firearms-related accidents in 1991. (That's the latest year for which figures are available at the time of the composition of the rec.guns FAQ found here.)

According to the most recent FBI Uniform Crime report (2000), available here, murder and negligent homicide of children ages 0 through 12 (by ALL means, not just firearms) totaled only 641. (The bulk of those were infants, implying most were killed by abuse or neglect rather than with-firearm murder.)

The numbers jump beginning with the 13 thorugh 16 age group, as gang-related murders begin to dominate the stats. But to get to "ten children killed by handugns per day" you need to consider "childhood" to extent into the mid-thirties.

So I recommend that, if you wish to continue using the analogy in future argumnets on the subject, you drop the bogus statistic. You can make the point even better using a real one ("robbers use handguns to kill two people per day"), or skipping the stats entirely, thus minimizing the risk of offending people who otherwise would be your allies.

Re:Using myth as fact discredits your arguments.

[lessig]

There's a nice article about the conflicting statistics relating to guns here.

If "childhood" is under 21, then the number is 12 a day.

But who cares? What possible relevance could it have to the argument. Even if it is one a day, the point is still true: Guns kill more people every day than Dimitry's code ever will. So why is the gov't so obsessed with code?

Re:Using myth as fact discredits your arguments.

[DarkProphet]

I can't really understand why some people are so quick to discredit someone without bothering to understand what they were trying to say. Are you scared some conflicting opinion may actually have merit? Or perhaps telling other people they are stupid makes you feel smart by proxy. Hmmm? People who nitpick tend to miss the big picture. If you'd look at the context of the statement in question, its not hard to see that all he is trying to get across is that a normal (non-tech) company doesn't get sued if someone does something illegal with thier products or services. General Motors doesn't exactly get sued when someone gets drunk, drives, and kills someone either.

That was the gist of the paragraph you so heartily ranted about. I'm sure the statistics you stated are probably verifiable, but I'm lazy and I don't care that much. I'll take your word for it until I find something more reliable. Thats what alot of folks who follow the big picture do. And thats how you end up with common-knowledge statistics (factual or otherwise) like how 10 kids get killed everyday with handguns.

Capice? You can take your foot out of your mouth now ;-)

Anyway, my point is really that people take a lot of heresay as at least partial fact, if not the truth. Its too much hassle to research every rumored fact and bust the people who spread supposed "big lie propaganda". Some people have more worthwhile things to do. People like Supreme Court judges.

Some laws regarding technology could be proven unconsitutional, if the judges understood the case at a level that doesn't require them to be a computer nerd. I certainly hope you're not a lawyer looking to win a big pro-freedom case, because you'll be too busy shooting yourself in the foot. Yes these laws are bad in our minds, but face the facts, this is hardly a free country anymore. I quoth a Disney movie: "Haven't you ever heard of the golden rule? Whoever has the gold makes the rules!". Its more true in the good ol' USA than maybe any other "civilized" country. The government is just as easily bought as anyone else. Hell, we're all human. Ask the average american the very first thing they think of when they hear the word "politician", and you'll likely get some sort of negative response.

I find it funny in a bittersweet way that we're not attacking the root of the problem. We wouldn't exactly have to fight current law to get our freedoms back if we could prevent the legislature from being swayed by big business in the first place. But, then again, something like that could get a person killed. Would you die for your freedom? Just remember that arguing semantics doesn't get the shit-work done.

A couple of comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding question 2; I understood that the person asking the question was referring to disobedience in terms of the commonly despised terms of the DMCA rather than copyrights in general.

Personally, if I lived in the US, I'd completely ignore a law that said I can't write software to play DVDs that I've bought on my computer.

In your answer to question 12, you jump to some conclusions too quickly, IMO.

The "code is speech" demonstration is indeed important in that it demonstrates that one party should not be able to control the use of code written by another party. This is, to some extent, the case with DeCSS. Copyright certainly does not cover algorithms, only specific implementations of algorithms. It may be the case that DeCSS contains lookup tables, the content of which someone may claim a copyright to, I can't remember for certain since it has been a while since I looked at the code, but the cases related to the code have, to my understanding, been related to claims of trade secret misappropriation and violations of the DMCA based on the fact that the code is a circumvention device. I have not heard any claims that anyone other than the authors own the copyright (and thus "speech rights") to DeCSS.

So I consider the speech demonstration to be imporant because the more valid case (the one based on the DMCA) is a test of an entirely new doctrine (banning circumvention rights) that is questionable, and made even more so by showing that this ban would effectively be a ban on speech.

Involvement (was:Keep Your Hands Off My IP)

[coats]

Oh, and by the way, so far this year I've spent a little over $150 this year on postage to Congress about IP issues. And so far, a grand total of one reply.

fwiw

Didn't you read his responses?

[CdotZinger]

[paraphrasing...]

No talking! "Payable to the EFF" are the only words we want to hear from you.

Infrastructure ownership is as improtant as copyri

[agentk]

Lessig brings up an essential aspect of the Internet that is so often overlooked-- the ownership of the infrastructure. He uses the term "end-to-end" to describe the free flow of information from host to host over common carrier lines.

Now that small ISPs are all but extinct, crushed by AOL and "Broadband" providers (cable, DSL), and those broadband providers (mainly cable providers) are not regulated as common carriers, the most important feature of the Web, and the Internet in general, is going to die: the ability to publish, with a minimum of outside control. "New Media Convergence" is the convergence of your TV and a shopping mall, and this is NOT the world I want for future generations. I want individuals, not consumers, to actively contribute to, and build cyberspace, not be merely entertained and sold.

Free expression requires basic *material* infrastructure, plus the "immaterial" structures of the net (free protocols and software, basically) as well as copyright *freedom* rather than copyright restriction. The law will affect all of these things in some way or another -- Lessig is right, we need to do more to protect cyberspace, and not give up.

For more info (and advocacy) about media ownership, see the Center for Digital Democracy.

Re:Infrastructure ownership is as improtant as cop

[agentk]

To avoid the trap of bitching and moaning without offering any solutions, I'll try to mention a couple positive things we should work towards:

1. The primary reason my household switched from cablemodem to dsl was that the cablemodem service sucked balls. A secondary reason is that our provider blocked port 80 requests to all customers, and the upload bandwidth was severely throttled (1/3 i think of the download)-- obviously they don't think web publishing is something its customers want or need to do. Of course getting the DSL installed was a serious pain in the ass, but it works pretty well.

We need more competing home-broadband providers. Local area (community area) wireless providers may be the answer, I think. Like reverse-TV stations-- if they can retain independence and competition and not be bought up by AT&T/Comsat and AOL/TW, and swallowed up by mergers, the way TV is/has.

2. smaller, competing web hosting companies (like the one i use) are an excellent thing for the web, but they need protection against criminal suits pertaining to copyright and freedom of speech for their customers. This is unfortunately a problem that may not be resolved soon.

Math clarification...

[Raetsel]

2 to the 60th comes out to a really frickin' HUGE number -- certainly more than a billion. I thought about it some, dug out a good calculator... and found that it's 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 (!!!) Good God, I can't even pronounce that!

Disney certainly can't muster THAT much money, but I'm sure they'd love to claim that as the "true, emotional, and cultural value" of Mickey Mouse.

Great idea, though -- if your idea pays, keep the copyright... for a while. If not, it becomes the property of the people -- like it was originally intended.

Re:Math clarification...

[nathanm]

1,152,921,504,606,846,976 (!!!) Good God, I can't even pronounce that!

That's easy:

1 quintillion, 152 quadrillion, 921 trillion, 504 billion, 606 million, 846 thousand, 976.

Re:Math clarification...

[jshainsky]

No, it's
1 trillion, 152 thousand, 921 billion, 504 thousand, 606 million, 846 thousand, 976

Re: NO tax credit

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

You are correct that there appears to be no *Federal* tax credit for political contributions. I was mistaken. There is a *state* tax credit for political contributions in some states (Oregon, where I used to live -- probably why I was confused -- and Massachusetts, AFAIK). I don't know what restrictions are placed on those contributions, and whether contributions to PACs fall under those credits. It's up to each individual to determine what tax benefits may be available to them.

However, the tax credit angle is a bonus, I don't suspect that will be of primary importance to anyone interested in this particular case.

But thanks for the correction.

Electronic grass roots.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The whole point to having a regular contributor to /. is to spur not only debate but action. ... Maybe somebody like Lessig can help crystallize the /. community into getting real grassroots political leverage.

Personally, I'm doubtful - too many of us are frustrated, cynical, jaded, and face it, just plain lazy ... We feel powerless and disenfranchised so ... we stew in apathy

One source of the perception of apathy is that the opportunities to DO something are not effectively made public. If you don't spend all your time digging through obscure documents (or hire a lobbiest to do it FOR you), you don't know what the congress critters or regulators are up to.

Finding out on your own about legislation or rules that might affect you is SEVERAL full-time jobs. (Hell - they pass laws and impose regulations faster than a man can read, and the legislature doesn't even read most of what it votes on.) This stuff gets buried so deep (often deliberately) that even major corporations with entire DEPARTMENTS watching for things that affect them sometimes miss it. Responding to this crap is IMPORTANT. But people who have real work to do - and even those who don't - just can't spend enough time to hunt it down.

And that's where organizations like the EFF can come in.

I note that a number of Slashdot people (myself included) filed comments on DCMA rulemaking with the copyright office in response to a posting (within a day or so of the cutoff) that the opportunity existed.

When "action" consists of demonstrating that some people out there have an opinion, and the message can be sent by phone, email, or snail mail, the Slashdot Effect can be put to effective use. Combine that with a TIMELY article telling where to submit comments and we can flood them out.

I emphasize TIMELY because a day's notice will yeild a bunch of flames and a few well-thought-out letters, in a burst that makes it obvious they're all from a single community. Notice near the start of a comment period and a reminder a few days from the end will produce a large yeild of well-thought and well-researched comments.

This is not just speculation. This is exactly what the pro-gun movement does. The NRA (with membership second only to ARP) and its lobbying arm the ILA gets the press. But it is only one of a number of groups (GOA, Members' Councils, state orgs like CRPA, JPFO, etc.) which send out "legislative alerts" to their members when something is discovered in time to react. (They also interview and rate candidates come election time and make their voting records known.)

So instead of moaning about how apathetic the working nerds are (demotivating them further), perhaps EFF might put their staff to work to act as our early warning system, and SUBMIT SHORT ARTICLES to Slashdot when there are opportunities available for an avalanch of electronic or paper mail and phone calls. (Many of us have printers, right? We can pretty much ALL send a handwritten, hand-addressed letter, and those are even MORE effective.)

I'm sure the Slashdot editors would be happy to post such notices. They even have categories for them! Legislative and regulatory rulemaking on IP and other aspects of internet and programming freedom are PRIME examples of "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters!". How could they resist a couple EFF staffers acting as investigative reporters - for free?

With EFF (and others) to dig up the info, Slashdot (and others) to spread the word in a TIMELY fashion and serve as dissusion and planning venues, and HORDES of internet-connected VOTERS to flood the critters with mail, we could turn a lot of this around.

But nothing will happen unless those hordes have the necessary INFORMATION to act.

And that's what the computer age is about, isn't it?

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[Anonymous Coward]

people who create content without using DRM will of course be classified under the law as "pirates", all non-DRM content will be assumed to be an illegal copy of something, and will be automatically deleted by your DRM-enabled computer in the small chance that you are able to evade the United State's DRM firewall and download it from Cuba.

Uh-huh. And I will merrily boot Linux, scrounge around in my CD archives for a copy of UUCP, register for a cheap-ass international calling plan, and crank up the modem... merrily flipping Bill and Mickey the proverbial bird. A penguin, of course.

And probably, like rick@seismo from long ago, start my own damn pay-for-play UUCP service. And this time I won't let it turn into a spamhaus...

And if it comes to where they filter out data calls, we'll bloody well do it via sneakernet. The tech is way too far advanced. No way to stop it.

Oh, I agree, it would be sad, and partly our fault, if it ever came to this.... but the Pandora's box of real freedom has been opened, and all the penguins and daemons and other critters are loose in the world. And an angry penguin charging towards you at 100mph is a fearsome sight indeed. So don't get in our way.

Re:Copyleft through Copyright?

[pimproot]

Today, using a BSD license rather than GPL, anyone may take your source and profit from a repackaged, copyright-restricted commercial program. Essentially, they may leapfrog ahead at your expense and promote a non-sharing consumerist culture. It encourages a degenerating cycle dependent on proprietary providers benefiting from many of the advantages of shared source and few of the drawbacks. Not only do you turn the other cheek, but you pretend to ignore the shoulder buried deep beyond your borderline.

In an imperfect situation like this, GPL provides a stop-gap and fosters what it can of a sharing spirit, carved from the inhospitable terrain of selfishness.

To those who would use GPL code for non-sharing purposes, the tools of their own hoarding will be turned against them. Poetic justice, to me. And for a pragmatic mind capable of mildly complex reasoning, perfectly justified.

Thanks. I just donated to EFF.

[AProgrammer]

Lessig,
I appreciate your work, and you're right, the EFF is doing the best job of anyone to protect our civil liberties. I just donated to them. I hope others will too. Keep up the good work. I'll keep donating and phoning my congress people.
Happy Holidays.
Robert Evans

Re:Non-Americans Response? (WIPO)

[hughk]

The World Intellectual Property Organisation covers patent and copyright law. The US seems to be one of the main lobbying forces, so whichever country you are in, this will eventually affect you!

Canada may be ok now, but WTO membership tends to force compliance with the rules set by WIPO. IF WIPO rules change then Canada and the EU must follow. There is no way that Canada can keep sane if the lobbyists beneath them keep active.

That is unless all of the non-US citizens campaign for their own copyright-law to be kept more restricted in scope.

If free archives can exist elsewhere on the web, then the Sonny Bono Copyright Extention act is undermined.

Hear HEAR!

[nyet]

ACtually, perhaps instead of donating to the EFF we should be donating to a marketing fund to hire an ad agency to come up with /. slogans and musical jingles for all the hot button issues ;)

I'm thinking maybe something along the lines of NRA-type "guns don't kill people, people kill people" stuff.

DMCA - G. Orwell's thought control police state sooner than you think.

CNNTimeWarnerAolTurnerMSNBC - for those of us who don't have time for news that doesn't entertain!

Intellectual property: Honk if you love monopolies!

Microsoft: Stifling innovation with our own MSInnovation(TM) since 1975!

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then this syndicate's keys get revoked, so the media oligarchy can maintain its chokehold. Hardly the first time such pressure tactics have been used.

too little, too late

[samantha]

If we grant the fundamental premise of copyright and other so-called IP rights enforced by code then we have left the door open for the endless degradation of freedom and for the monitoring and control of the internet. Why? Because any architecture that supports these things completely in the code deep enough in the architecture of our networks and computers will also be code that enables all that we most abhor.

I don't see how there can be any other answer for freedom than the full support of absolute anonymity and thus code supported full freedom. Will we need to adjust the way content providers get paid and protected? Yes. But we cannot afford to do it by building in chokeholds on freedom.

Lessig is much to be applauded for shining the light on the implications of what is done and the vulnerabilities of the net to those who would control it and us all. However, I think he is largely off-base when he puts down libertarianism and supports the power and right of governents to control these increasingly vital aspects of our lives and freedom. I don't think you can have it both ways. If you grant the right of the government to monitor and control then you have automatically failed to support freedom, especially at the level of code.

Re:watch valenti vs lessig round 2 for some hope..

[Anonymous Coward]

Valenti doesn't debate using reason, he uses cold, hard cash.

Re:Rights of authors to control their works (i.e.

[Crispin Cowan]

The main problem with this is that DRM without mandated hardware is fundamentally impossible. DRM without controlling hardware amounts to cute watermarks and obfuscation. You cannot prevent bits from being copied, you can only build machines that will refuse to play copied bits. While I agree that functional DRM may well be a boon to independent artists, it is about as helpful as observing that functional antigravity devices would be a boon to transportation, i.e. a pipe dream.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase