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Lessig On IP Protection, Conflict
cdlu writes "According to NewsForge [part of OSDN, like Slashdot], Stanford University law professor, author, and Creative Commons chairman Lawrence Lessig sharpened the definition of the ongoing legal struggle over intellectual property while talking at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday. According to Lessig: 'Contrary to what many people see as a cultural war between conservative business types and liberal independents, this is not a 'commerce versus anything' conflict. It's about powerful (business) interests and if they can stop new innovators'."
long term implications. What is going on with the corporations will, in the long run, turn america into a third-world nation -- while the economic infrastructure will follow the IT industry to somewhere more freindly to innovation.
Can you say 'brain drain'?
Right.
Some of us have been trying to open people's eyes to that for decades.
China and Brazil have already had their eyes opened on this score. They are both large, resource rich countries.
They might even have an ax or two to grind.
KFG
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
It worked for America. We ripped stuff off from the continent in the old days... even now, typefaces aren't protected in the US (as opposed to Europe and the UK.) Look at India - they built up manufacturing and research expertise churning out generic versions of patented drugs. Taiwan and China started out making cheap knockoff copies of goods... now they're making the bulk of the world's laptops and cheap industrial equipment.
Intellectual property is an artificial concept, especially now that digital media allows us to make unlimited copies. A book reader is a physical device that takes time and money to manufacture on a per-unit basis. An e-book is an intangible bundle of electrons that can easily be pulled from Project Gutenberg, if no modern publisher is willing to release books in that format.
Of course, what actually happens is that there's demand for some modern book as eBooks, and if nobody provides it, then some fan will make one, and blam - free copies all over the place, and the publisher gets nothing more than a big headache.
Lessig's ideas are revolutionary. Before Stanford's Creative Commons project, nobody was seriously talking about bring the ability to create non-software media licenses to the masses. It was available only to those who could afford attorneys.
Revolutionary doesn't necessarily mean coming up with a different system -- it can be a revolutionary use of the existing system which is what Lessig has done.
In fact, he is even more of a genius for finding creative ways to use existing IP law to meet his ends (of course taking enormous inspiration from Stallman et co. in the software space).
the problem is that people need to be able to protect their work and profit from it if they wish. with out this there is no real incentive for most people to do anything much. patents are a good thing when given out under very strict conditions, and should never be used to kill compeditors in an already developed market. eg. patenting gif files. licensing can also provide a steady and secure income for a company allowing further development of products which can benifit us all. the key is not so much that licensing and patents are bad, it's how they are misused. unfortunately this is a symptom of american corperate culture.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I can understand the argument for compensating the creator of an original work be it an invention or an artistic work, since otherwise there would be little incentive to innovate.
I do not understand why individuals and companies consider it a right to be able to control the use of their invention or demand extravagant or prohibitive compensation for its use. An idea or work of art, once formulated should be equally available to everyone to build upon. Determining what is or isn't prohibitive is trickier though I think we'd be able to do better than the current broken system.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I have never been under the impression that L.L. was against copyright or patents in principle (at least not as they were conceived of in the constitution), he was just against how they have been distorted and twisted into long-term monopolies that are used for no other reason than make money. When I saw him speak, he pointed out that copyright was set up to encourage writers (and at first it was ONLY writers) to continuously work and release stuff out into the creative commons, where in a limited period of time (conservatively, more list 7 years instead of the lifetime of the artist) it would be released out to open for everyone to use freely.
If copyright was instituted correctly and as the founding fathers intended it would encourage a continuous upgrade of ideas from everyone, including the original author. For instance, if a writer of a novel would have to keep on writing in one way or another. When corps cry about the importance of copyright, it's often forgotten that a fiction writer, for example, could just release a new edition of their work that might have a new introduction or new essays about the work or even slight revisions on the story and this would be a BRAND NEW copyright, giving them a new 7 years (or whatever) for the new work. A nonfiction writer could also add evidence or do other rewrites to their work and they would likewise get a BRAND NEW copyright, or a new author could then build on the previous ideas brought forward freely. As you can see, this "classic" copyright encourages continuous work while our version of copyright encourages you to sit back and collect the dough for the rest of your life.
So he's not really anti-copyright or anti-license. He's against using it in a way that goes against what its original intent. So in a you're right.. he's not revolutionary. He wants to go back to the original rules. I for one agree with him.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
during the antitrust trial:
"Microsoft is just one good idea away from oblivion."
I may not have the quote exactly right, but the idea expressed is correct.
Therefore, to protect one's future, if one is a power player, one must protect innovation from outside the company. Excessive innovation from inside the company is, more often than not, antithetical to profits.
As an example from outside IT, a Trinity factory oval racer who used to practice at my track once told me the story of his first race for the team. He not only won, but he broke the track race record by two seconds.
When he got off the driver's stand, glowing with pride and accomplishment, the team manager stormed up to him and said, "Don't ever let me see you do anything like that again, or your fired. We came here with seconds in hand. You only needed to win by one second, not half a lap. Now every other team knows how fast we are, and they're all going to go home and figure out how to go just as fast before they come out to a major meet again. You just threw away a full season's advantage by showing off. And a full season's sales advantage that goes with it."
There is no advantage to an established company in offering too much "advancment" to the public. Especially if they can get the public to buy chrome as advancment.
Anybody from outside who offers advancement when the public is willing to buy chrome simply needs to be stopped.
A large and powerful corporation, again using Microsoft as the obvious example, by necessity becomes conservative. They have little to gain. They can live off of the the return of their outside investments, effectively, for eternity. They can only lose.
They don't like losing.
If they can create a conservative general atmosphere in society and at law that favors them, well, they don't have to because they can't have any real competition.
Other powerful corporations aren't real competition in innovation because they're all playing by the same rule sheet. Only try to win by one second, so you can sell the other seconds you've already got later, when people get tired of this year's chrome.
KFG
HE's right on with this. Developed nations will be disintermediated and would not even notice. Previously you simply went to a new jurisdiction, like when the film industry came to California to avoid scrutiny by Edison's people and patents. Our current laws are really on a crash course with innovation. Innovators will simply route avoid them to countries where their IP laws allow them to innovate.
Thalasar
Why would I exclude Taiwan and Hong Kong? Hong Kong's had even less "IP" law enforcement than China. Ditto for Taiwan. And Hong Kong's had the benefit of a non-tyrannical government for much of the time and, even now, China's adopting a largely "hands off" policy. That just makes my point stronger, not weaker.
I just get this ugly feeling that we in the US (and perhaps the West in general) are getting ready to diminish ourselves the way the Islamic empire diminished itself around the time of the Rennaissance. I know there's much more to it than IP laws, and that the Islamic empire was busy coping with barbarians, etc.
But there are some parallels: A civilization that grew to prosperity based on free thought, progress, and advancement of knowledge. Conservative elements that grew to dominance and stifled the very free thought that made them great. As for coping with barbarians, perhaps there is a modern parallel for that too, in terrorism.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I'm not discounting your point that having incentive helps motivate people to innovate.
But the truth is, most of the good stuff out there was not created by people looking for an incentive - it was created by people who _loved_ doing what they did, and hacked it to their advantage.
All of the world's greatest works, and greatest genuises never worked for money or incentive - that helped, sure, but it was not the goal. The purpose was to innovate for the love of the subject, for the very sake of innovation itself.
Look at Nikolas Tesla, or any of the really great inventors. Or physicsts and mathematicians. Or even musicians. The real good ones do not really care about the money - they do it because they love playing music - its their life, and its in their blood. Sure, a little incentive helps them move on, but with or without it they will do what they do simply because it gives them happiness.
Now, thats whats wrong with today's culture. People are not willing to do anything without compensation. We expect something in return. Look at the trash quality of music today - its only because the morons who are making it are interested only in making money and fame, and not music in itself. Why do so many patents exist? People are not willing to innovate because they love what they do, they are willing to innovate if they can profit and get something in return.
I feel that this is a very bad trend, and a very bad notion. If you notice where true innovation comes from, even today it is only from people who do not care about what they get in return - take Linus Torvalds for example. What he did was simply for the love of what he did best - nothing more.
Unless this attitude changes, and people accept that knowledge belongs to humanity - you may profit from it, but thats not the reason you should be doing it - we are fucked.
Congress could repeal the copyright laws tomorrow, if you could get enough votes to do so. That's more of a possibility than you might think, if you consider that more Americans use peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush.
My article suggests a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform, ranging from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
I want every American peer-to-peer network user to read my article by the time of the elections. Presently it gets about 2000 readers a day, but needs to get read about a hundred times more frequently to achieve my goal. If you feel as I do that what I have to say is important, then you can help by linking to my article from your own website, weblog or from message boards.
You'll see from my sig that I've been asking readers to Googlebomb it with the phrase "free music downloads". This has been pretty successful so far, with my article now ranking #3 at Google for that query. It's getting about 800 search engine referrals each day for "free music downloads".
My article has a Creative Commons license if you'd like to mirror it.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
[Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and publicity rights have] always been an artificial concept. That doesn't make it necessarily a bad one.
I agree with the principle behind copyright, that giving an author an economic incentive to create can promote Progress, but I disagree with its implementation in the U.S. Code as of today, such as the effectively perpetual term of monopoly, the breadth of the monopoly on musical works given that there exist a provably finite number of melodies, and the breadth of the monopoly on derivative works that in the end prevents authors lacking deep pockets for a "fair use" legal defense from creating some satiric works.
I agree with the principle behind patents, that giving an inventor an economic incentive to invent can promote Progress, but I disagree with the poor job that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has done with respect to examining patents for obviousness given prior art.
In the 19th century a patent was for a very specific widget, and a detailed design was presented. So, the idea of photography could not be patented, but only a specific method of creating a photograph. Therefore, improvements in photography wpuld not be hampered by patents. Today, however, it appears possible to patent vaugue concepts that are explained by drawing a couple of boxes, such as streaming video, 1-click shopping, launching a helper application, etc. It seems that the new ideas about what a patent should allow, not the old ideas, are the ones that are flawed.
Vote for Pedro
Yes.. but you miss one key point.
Man does not live by gratification alone. If we don't ensure that the innovators, inventors, and creators get some monetary benefit out of the work they create, then they're simply going to wind up spending a lot of their time doing other crap so that they can put food on the table.
That's simply a waste of their talents. I'd rather be encouraging some crap inventors simply so that the truly talented ones could be spending the majority of their time doing what they're best at.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
The essential building blocks of all technology come the pursuit of truth, not dollars.
I think the general public really believes that money is the sole incentive of technical creativity. I agree money can be a good incentive if you're selling televisions or computers, but the real underlying work that went into the ability to produce these things was done, not for profit, but more because people were compelled by the process of discovery.
The integrated circuit is a good example. Most of the fundamental research that went into the chip came from a lot of painstaking research in solid state physics and was carried out by researchers in university labs making less than they would working for a Fortune 500 OEM.
People really are capable of doing things just for fun, because they're interested in them, or just like knowing how things work.
However, people do need to get paid. But the question here should be, how do we bring people together to create technology? Wouldn't it be great to get all the top cancer researchers together and see if they could make some headway on understanding tumors? But how do we meet their needs, keep them happy, make sure they are adequately compensated, etc.? Though this may be difficult to accomplish under our current economic system, I think you'll agree it's something we need to work towards as it seems to me a much better approach than saying, "we have a pattent system, and if you can find the cure for cancer, you can make a lot of money." This seems so inefficient as comapanies tend to scramble over each other, reinventing the wheel, keeping their research secret and trying to make as much money as they can.
Thoughts?