Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Copyright Law for the Future: Control & Creativity

Posted by michael on from the control-and-more-control dept.

ablair writes: "MacSurfer is linking to a truly excellent article by Stanford Law's Lawrence Lessig, on the copyright balance between Control & Creativity. A must-read for those interested in everything from the RIAA-mp3 battles to the way GPL & BSD Licenses should be."

3 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. MIT? Nope - CERN. by mccalli · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article: "The World Wide Web was the fantasy of a few MIT computer scientists."

    Or maybe even a few scientists at CERN...

    Cheers,
    Ian

  2. Sigh by loraksus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Broke college students and an entire culture raised on broadcast radio, tv and the premise that media and entertainment is free.
    Think about this example - think back to the days where a personal cd player cost around $150, sucked batteries etc, etc. Think of what the CD industry was before Columbia House (and scamming their ass hard). It sucked, virtually nobody had cds - why? well, because the ability to play awesome quality music / not have to ff, etc, etc wasn't worth the cost.

    I have no idea how the entertainment industry can think that their attempts at DRM, etc can compete with "free" or at the very least "cheap alternative" sources like the radio or the cds burned by polly the pirate. You can't change the mindset of people who were raised to turn on the tv / radio and tune to whatever station and get a program without any hastle.

    The cat is out of the bag, more people use the "illegal" services than use the legal - hell - if you use a commercial DRM supporting player - i.e. rio 600 - there is actually value lost - the interface is a fucking pain compared to how i get files to my rio volt (cd mp3 player). Not that diamond could ever make software worth a damn anyways (hw kicks ass), but still . . .

    Now the video industry has something that actually might save their ass - DVD special features, the fact that data speeds over the net are slow and the lack of a comercial player for DIVX on your TV - which are the only things that are preventing DIVX from being in almost every household.

    Quality sure as hell isn't stopping people - the new 4.12 divx codec looks damn near dvd quality at full screen if postprocessing is set to max (needs a good box tho, about 1 GHz, damn).

    What can I say, this isn't a financial war they are fighting, but one against a mindset, and they are approaching it the wrong way.

    --
    1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
  3. What Larry doesn't get... by Sanity · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...is that not only has law been misapplied with respect to the Internet (and communication technologies generally), but that the law has no place in regulating people's ability to communicate.

    In the US, the Law gets its authority from democratically elected government. The Government gets its authority from the people, as conveyed through the democratic process (voting). If the Government has control over the information the people have access to, then they have the ability to manipulate people's ability to make an informed voting decision. This corrupts the very democratic process from which the law gets its authority.