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Lessig on the Future of the Public Domain
hank writes "The O'Reilly Network is running an interview with Lawrence Lessig -- author of "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" and "The Future of Ideas" -- on the future of the public domain, reaction to his calls to arms, and his next venture, Creative Commons, "machinery to build licenses that allow people to mark their content as available in any number of ways to the public domain.""
Limited Copyrights + Patents within reason= Great. :(
Any ref to DMCA = Bad.
SSSCA= worse.
CPBTA or whateverTF its called now= a sure sign that our gov likes to be anally raped.
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
Whoa, I didn't know that it's that absurd... 220 years is really quite a lot ;)
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
HAHAHAH
This is the best joke ever. Someone, please mod parent up to +5, Funny!
...should be a very interesting Supreme Court case. I think the best argument they have going for them is that extending the copyright of already created works cannot possibly meet the constitutional requirement that copyright law "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Over half of the supreme court members have directly signed rulings which state unequivically that this is a constitutional requirement.
Might as well give up now -- there's nothing you can do about it.
The problem is not corporate influence. If it were, McCain-Feingold would never have passed. The real problem is that 99% of people don't even know what public domain is, and couldn't care less if it went away.
In Europe, they actually remove works from the public domain when copyright is extended.
Lessig has an interesting take on public domain, in that it is quite similar to the whole watermarking / DRM scheme.
This idea should sound familiar. This strikes me as a scheme quite similar to Digital Rights Management, but in a different direction. Instead of restricting the distribution of content, this technological measure would allow anyone to readily identify the license of a particular work.Let's face it, small-time writers, musicians, and artists do not want to see their works used inappropriately in a commercial setting (and maybe not even inappropriately in a noncommercial setting), but they might want to allow individuals to share their respective works. This scheme would allow people to mark that situation so that anyone with the file could readily understand the author's wishes.
But, if this licensing scheme is put into wide use, it makes it trivial to implement a DRM management system that disallowed copying of files tagged with a restrictive license. So you have to ask yourselves, is the aforementioned benefit of marking your works as copyable or not in a commercial or noncommercial setting worth it if it means that all commercial music will tag themselves as commercial and noncopyable?
I do not trust this court to uphold public domain. Clinton practically held onto power with the help of media conglomerates, and like it or not Bush or any successor must reward or break the conglomerates to their will. Given the outcome of the 2000 campaign and other rulings, I suspect they will lean towards the corporatist viewpoint.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
When I look at the amount of money that Hollywood groups give to Senator Hollings, I think that its an amount that the supporters of the 'open source' movement could match. I think that if everyone who reads slashdot on a regular basis took up a collection for the EFF to be used to 'support' (read: buy off) law makers we could more then equal their buy offs by each donating $10. Personally, I would like to see open source lobby groups show up on the donation sheets of law-makers. What do you think about this idea? I'm willing to talk to the EFF and see if they will setup a pay-pal account for people to donate and help us encourage laws to be written that favour intellectual stimulation.
It seems to me principly they have failed to look beyond their own field. As a lawyering organization, the EFF has this belief it can "finess" and solve legal issues thru high mindend ideals like "software is speech" and then proceeds to loose case after case. The problem is they fail to see the system is so broken that it can no longer mearly be solved within itself.
DeCCS as a free speech issue is dead. The system wont accept this. Clearly, instead, this should have been done as a 4th ammendment case, not 1st! "Code as speech" nobody will get. That I have an absolute right to be secure in my own property is an issue every living breathing American can and will understand. The right to private property is what we often stated makes us different from "them", when "them", of course, was the good old "red menance".
What does DeCCS and the 4th ammendment have to do with couchmaster joe sixpack watching nascar is very simple. Tell him he cant take a cd, his own private property, and hell, stick it in a toaster if he so chooses and can get it to play that way, or similarly play it using a linux machine in his own home if he can figure out how, using his own property. That he can be arrested and jailed under the DCMA for simply using his very own private property. That he will understand. It's what we liked to say "they" would do.
There is a very valid 1st ammendment issue as well, but "code as speech" is not the one. If I can figure out how to make a toaster play my cd I have an absolute right as a free citizen to tell another and he has an absolute right as a free citizen to do this with his own propertly regardless of what the DCMA may claim about circumvention. DeCCS represents permitted and protected speech as public communication between individuals sharing knoweledge on how to use their own propertly, end of story.
Why do hackers write programs? Even ESR (boo, hiss) said that we write them to "scratch our own itch". If we can "scratch our own itch" why do we need to copyright our ideas? Shouldn't we encourage, rather than discourage, use of our programs? All copyrights are discouragement of our products. The only decent argument I have heard in favor of copyrighting "free" software is that someone else might copyright it and then sue the original author. That might possibly happen, but it's not very nice. We need to return to the days when we can trust and honor each other and distribute our projects freely. Peace.
2) For the products I've developed, it has become neccessary to build in "authentication" logic that registers the target computer with a server that looks for illegal copies. This is was Windows XP has done and I feel will become the norm for all software in the future. I wouldn't be suprised to see it exended to CD/DVD copy protection also.
If copyright is struck down or replaced/de-enhanced with something evil, I may loss my rights in 1) and 2) may become an illegal scheme itself.
This is not right. I think that there should be a way to share ideas on one hand and protect corporate interests on the other. And it should be up to the individual (or people/corporations developing an idea) to make that call. Governments are suppose to give people/corporations tools that encourage innovation not put up road blocks. If producing software becomes legally entangled, we will all lose.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth.
If the Eldred case fails,
we should all dress up like Mickey Mouse and stage a protest in Washington.
That would get media and public attention, plus, we would all be violating copyright law!
is the aforementioned benefit of marking your works as copyable or not in a commercial or noncommercial setting worth it if it means that all commercial music will tag themselves as commercial and noncopyable?
First of all, I think it'll be proven trivial to hack files to change their tags from not-copyable to copyable (as another poster suggested, repeat after me hackers: "I will not decrypt a copy-protection scheme until it is a widely accepted standard."). But even if it wasn't, I simply won't support any musician who takes that kind of stand. And not even as a moral thing, more as a matter of taste. For example, I liked Metallica until I saw Lars being a prick over the whole Napster thing. Now I think they're greedy bastards and it's ruined any enjoyment I've gotten from listening to their music. Personally, I hope a lot of other people will do the same thing and only support musicians, authors and publishers who use a more open licensing scheme.
c-hack.com |
Lessig: Well, that argument is only really framed in the context of Eldred. This case challenges the practice of Congress to systematically extend the terms of existing copyrights. Eleven times in the last 40 years Congress has extended the term of existing copyrights. And this is a practice which they've gotten into because copyright holders see great advantage to extending their copyrights, so that they continue to milk returns from their particularly successful properties.
I believe that the average technical competance or technological understanding of a US Congress-person is not yet up to par with the average patent/copyright seeker's. Hell, in my view, a degree in law is not a good base for deciding the technologies of the future and who/m gets the proper credit. Law has changed very little in the past few decades in light of all the technological advances that have taken place.
put that in your pipe and smoke it
You're overlooking a key point here.
The problem isn't that the RIAA and MPAA want to make it impossible to copy their product, it's that they want to make it impossible to copy *ANY* product because their schemes implicitly assume that all "legitimate" files are under their umbrella.
That's nonsense. I think we all have friends with their own bands - the RIAA proposals would make it impossible for them to share their own music. We all have friends with young children, the MPAA would make it impossible for them to share video footage with friends. It would make it impossible for older kids to put together video domentaries for "what I did this summer."
If the RIAA actually succeeded in making it impossible to copy their product, provided that it didn't interfere with other legitimate copies, I would cheer. I would see this as bringing us one day closer to a day when real diversity returns to the music store and airwaves because the non-RIAA players could get their voices heard.
But the current proposals would lock in the RIAA and the MPAA as THE arbitrators of their respective arts in this country. If you don't sign a deal with a major label under terms even worse than today, you would be forced to live in the technological gutter. On countercultural-friendly college campus it may become cool to go analog, but everywhere else it would be an insurmountable barrier.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
He can't do that! My automated patent generator already patented an automated license generator!
So if Copyright had been invented in say the time of Mozart extensions over time and dealings with his estate would have resulted in his music being private right up until today. Seems kind of absurd doesn't it?
I think copyright should end the day you die. You created it, you can no longer benefit from it, and your children should have find their own damn way of making money rather than living off of the income from your great ideas.
Of course it gets complex if an item is the copyright of a company because companies could theoretically last a long time (re IBM).
Everyone always says code rewrites are bad. I think the copyright laws are in severe need of a good rewrite.
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
The only way to combat copyright control is to start creating quality content and offering it in a GPL type way. It could even be something similar to how Ghostscript is done if you need to make money off of it. After a year give it away.
We need to start making high quality music that people would enjoy.
We need to get video editing equipment and start producing quality videos, shorts, and full movies.
I realize that there is a need $$ to produce high quality works, but that amount of $$ is dropping fast. This is the creative commons. It's us being creators and producers, not consumers and passive audiences. Make it a point to produce more than you consume!
Daniel
Adult children can "find their own damn way," but what about young children? Even unborn children, e.g., several of the children born after their fathers died on 9/11?
In recent years, it's also been the source of funds for the old-age care of the surviving spouse.
But both cases should be easily handled by "death + 20 years"
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Lessing really bothers me, he fails IMHO to understand that what we have here is a classic case of old economey trying to regulate the new economey. He also fails to understand that the problem will not go away till we get rid of the notion that it's allright to derive value by restricting the copying practices of other. Even if you do it nicely, or more nicely than is done now, it is still wrong.
Not to flame, but if he lived in the industrial revolution - he would have advocated that the free states could peacefully co-exist with the slave states. They didn't get it back then, he doesn't get it now.
For Hollings, it's probably not the money, it's the access to Power Elite that he is after.
The way I read it, the chart should show PD being about half of what it would be without copyright extensions, not a percent or two. The chart makes it appear as if the PD has been reset to zero with each copyright extension. Rather, works would have ceased entering PD following extensions, but the PD itself would not have decreased (excepting a legally significant, but still small, number of works which were withdrawn from PD following some recent revisions). The title of the chart (but not the legend which refers only to the "Public Domain", not a rate of growth) states the chart is of "rate of growth". In which case I find it odd that this growth is strictly linear over time. I'm also curious about the lack of a vertical scale. While I feel that the damage done to the public domain should be stressed strongly, it shouldn't be misrepresented. As a champion of the PD, I have to say that this chart does misrepresent the damage.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I'm at this moment writing up a license based on the GPL except to be used for musical recordings. I've started a label, Root Records (www.rootrecords.org should be up sometime next week), to distribute this open source music. An interesting twist is that I've decided that open source for music means that the source audio (the separate tracks--bass track, drum track, etc) should be distributed like a program's source code. So people can remix the tracks any way they want. Since I've just started, the only artist under this label is myself. If you want to check out the music before the site goes up, my first album is available in its entirity in the audio section of www.joshuacsehak.com. It sounds something like a cross between Moby and William Orbit. I think it's great stuff, and the people I've had listen to it agree. One of my friends mentioned he'd been listening to the album every day since he downloaded it. CDs (and source CDs) should be available soon (less than a week) after the site goes up.
The problem with independent music isn't that it takes a lot of $$ to produce it (I actually like Liz Phair's Girlysounds CDs--demo recordings made on a cheap 4-track--better than her studio albums), the problem is that it takes, and will always take a lot of $$ to market it. Especially for musicians like myself who make music that can't really be performed live. Large labels will always have the advantage of being able to tell people what they want to listen to. But here's to "word of mouth!"
c-hack.com |
They wouldn't have a leg to stand on. "The little mermaid" is a classic fairy tale, written by Hans Christian Anderson. They'd be just asking for a countersuit. Now if you included those crab and fish characters that Disney made up, then you might have some trouble. I think you should anyway though, if just to prove a point about the hipocrasy of Disney.
c-hack.com |
No equipment shall ever be made that will not ensure the intentions of authors of open source.
Hop to it tech boys.
should be easy enough.
This fight between old and new society is going on all over the planet - be it copyright or patentability of software.
The current usage of copyrighting software (and even more patenting it) will create a lot of the so called 'illegal' activities. Pretty much like the prohibition created 'illegal' deeds.
Laws should be a help to life, should support the overall situation, should regulate but not rule our lifes. If we continue these old laws, our children grow up as law-breakers, but that's not their fault.
Either the Western Sphere adopt their laws to the modern pace of development or the really interesting software development and distribution in 2020+ will happen in countries without these wrotten old concepts of intellectual property.
Why not have public patents?
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
If anybody needs dollars to act responseably he is not the politician who gets my vote. If the dirty old $$-politicians are continuing their copyright-extensions they kill their own political base of the future - the young people.
A better tactic would be to inform the youngsters of what is going on. Let's better support a FreeCopy movement with free webspace and bandwidth.
Today it's MP3, tomorrow it's our freedom which is at stake.
Will you all please learn to spell!
Hell, if you don't want to learn at least have the decency to run your text through a spellchecker so that those of us who have learned to spell don't have to suffer through your ideosyncratic use of "principly" (principally), "finess" (finesse) "loose" (lose), "minded" (minded), "mearly" (merely), "ammendment" (amendment x2), "propertly" (property x2), "knoweledge" (knowledge), "menance" (menace).
Even Taco spells better than this..Set an example for crying out loud. Good points made with all the "finess" of a 5yr old with a crayon.
I started a thread on this issues about a year ago on gnu.misc.dicsuss. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=bc4138180 3b7e0c0&rnum=1
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
-Clinton practically held onto power with the help of media conglomerates,
And just what "help" would that be ? The big media was kicking Bill Clinton from day one ( actually, day minus 100 ) !
The big media *has* been rewarded: Micheal Powell now runs the FCC. Soon big conglomerates will be able to own 100% of all markets. The big media treats Bush with kids gloves. The level of sycophancy is disgusting.
If we had an independent media, Bush would be a daily laughingstock.
This is interesting. The following post about this very topic was Pending for 3 months (I submitted it in January) until last week, when it was somewhat surprisingly rejected. Here it is for those interested.
2002-01-08 15:54:26 'The Future of Ideas': Intellectual Property (yro,doj)
Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig's book is about intellectual property, copyright law and the Internet. He proposes an 'open access' society with less of the IP extremism we've seen in the recent years. Lessig thinks patents and copyrights should be short, renewable 5-year terms vs. the current 90- to 150-year terms, writing, 'The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating.' And on the Internet he writes 'An environment designed to enable the new is being transformed to protect the old.' Lessig is pro-Napster and anti-RIAA and rails against Lucasfilm on the Phantom Edit. You can read a review at the New York Times, as well as the first chapter of 'The Future of Ideas'.
Amendment I
as read by the layman:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances.
as read by a Supreme Court Justice:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,
except in matters concerning Kiddie Porn or Copyright;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances.
Anything NOT worth doing is NOT worth doing well...
The law is an ass? Well, if it comes to my freedom to write good software using prooven algorithms I can be a pain in any ...
No chance Mr. President and Mr. Gates - I'm on the keyboard, not you.
Commercial music draws on timeless shared traditions of musical knowledge, folk tunes, public of music education, etc. If access to their product is perfectly controlled (pay per listen, listen in one medium only etc., differentially pricing for multi-user licenses etc.) it will be ignored.
good ref: Jaques Attali, "Bruits" (older edition translated as "Noise").
It's one thing to insist on using whatever means are possible to protect the copyright on what the courts have deemed your property. But where the RIAA and MPAA are concerned they want to control not just their property, but the entire *genre* of property regardless of who it belongs to.
These vermin are well aware that if they implement their protectionist schemes and piss off the consumer that said consumer - not a big fan of corporate welfare - will take his business elsewhere. The only way they can protect their position in the 21st century, against forces that'd in a truly capitalist market would make the lot of them obsolete within the year, is to legislate themselves monopoly powers by purchasing congressman. They have to make sure that they not only control access to their property but *everyone else's as well*. That's the only way the whole welfare-oriented house of cards can stand for any length of time. Without this monopoly and the power of the government to stand behind it protectionist measures would simply drive consumers into the arms of competitors.
If ever there was firm indication that America is *not* capitalist, and is becoming less capitalist as time goes on, this is it. I have no idea what to call this economic system (corporate statism?) but it has nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism and is, in fact, fundamentally opposed to capitalism at its core. Because capitalism would wipe these bastards off the face of the map.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
your swedish wang hasnt had it in at least 16 years
http://www.telepath.com/hrothgar/pd_size_model_2.h tml