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Interview With Lawrence Lessig On Future Rights
tres3 writes "In an interview with the O'Reilly Network Mr. Lessig discusses many current issues that may have future legal implications. He starts with
MGM's request for Certiorari in the Grokster case. His conclusion is that ReplayTV was forced out of business by a legal challenge, not a legal victory. Lessig continues on to discuss, among other things, The Creative Commons and their new
Sampling License and how it may affect the way that some movies and music, that contain samples from other sources, are made in the future. From the article: 'So the same act of creativity in some sense, you know, taking, creating, mixing out of what other people do, is legal in the text world and illegal in the digital media world.'"
At this point it is the "copyright holders" who have the gold, and it is they who are making the rules.
This is a state of affairs which has no hope of changing (look at what is going on with the supreme court and with the EU and the patent fiasco); learn to live with it.
There's no alternative.
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
Artistic works and I think you can include software in that definition have a value which is determined by the user.
As a content producer or copyright holder or patent holder your attitude to this ranges from I couldnt careless to sue the dead granny.
The big problem in reality is corperate greed, any exchange of files that they originally produced they see as a lost sale that they should have made. This only makes sense if people have the morals of a corperation.
What it means as a corperation is that your suppliers have no value to you. In physical trade thats seen as footwear manufacturers pay children 50p to produce footwear sold for £50 in supermarkets fixing a milk price below the cost of production, farmers being forced into contracts to supply one supermarket chain then being told the product isn't wanted and it gets left to rot in the fields, At least with our morning coffee we have an idea of how badly the producers are exploited. These are the morals of a corperate world- none what so ever and these are the standards by which we are being judged.
We will never pay for anything which we can get for free only if punitive damages are made against individuals is there any hope for the copyright holders to scare individuals into paying for copyrighted products.
Is this true are we just prepared to take and never pay for anything if we can get it for free or near free if we were corperations not people the answer is yes but we are not.
lets take a look at a legal method of obtaining books software and music and films for free or near free the public libarary should the public libary be sued for damages for the millions of books it regularly distributes to millions if not billions, look at all the lost sales there, or TV perhaps millions of viewers watching films instead of buying them. Lets shut the TV Stations down lets shut the libarys down. These blatent leachers of corperate property.
The reality is that TV Radio and libarys do in fact generate sales for the copyright holders and so does peer to peer file sharing.
Artistic works have no value in themselves, what value has a sound or an image
perhaps the sound of me breaking wind is mine copyrightable for all eternity it is mine I produced it you heard its exquisite tones its delicate textures. so pay me for it then! no perhaps it has no value for you.
People pay for things they value and can afford simple as that the reality is that human beings have an appreciation of an artists labour and will pay for it without being sued if it has enough value for them.
If your making a living using someone elses work and you do not pay them for it then punitive actions are reasonable, What is crazy is that the people who make money from selling fake products, selling 'pirated' copies of movies and cd's are operating freely the mpaa will not come after me for buying a copy of a movie from a guy in a market but will if i download it myself.
Lets just look to the future where copyright is enforced vigourously everything i look at listen too I pay for. well whats going to happen then is i listen to and view a lot less.
See p2p as a marketing tool that actually increases sales not a method of reducing sales.
Does an author see a libary as a threat to sales or a method to gain a following a buying readership if the later what is p2p file sharing other than i big libary.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Well, you and I seem to be of the same conviction. I am sure there are many more people around like that on Slashdot
What you seem to be suggesting is that evolutionary pressure works against this kind of prohibition, and hence it is dangerous. You did not elaborate on why it is dangerous, and I would be interested in hearing your take on it.
I would argue that the reason restrictions are dangerous is because they fight against things that would otherwise naturally evolve. If you fight against evolution, you fall behind. If creative thought is restricted, then it will flourish elsewhere and your own culture will fall behind. If you restrict an economy, your economy falls behind. It is no coincidence that the countries with the best quality of life are also mostly the freest. (Actually, that link is a bit of a can of worms. it is a lagging index, where past achievements and good governance count. And Singapore is a remarkable and illustrative special case - free-market under a benevolent dictatorship. Let's not get into that tangent.)
Anyway, so the danger of restrictions is that they cripple progress in the long run. So, because of this danger, I believe restrictions as government policy should only come about in the rarest of rare cases, AND then only with a safeguard of constantly monitored good governance, AND only in cases where progress may otherwise be impeded. Patents and copyright of derivative works are bad restrictions because progress in the long term is impeded by having them.
"We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them -- to declare 'some rights reserved.'"
Among the rights an artist may choose to reserve when configuring their Creative Commons license is "No Derivative Works," explained in cartoon here.
Indeed, the Creative Commons' leading example musician is Roger McGuinn who: "chose the Creative Commons license that maximizes a combination of free distribution with artistic control and integrity." -- note that Roger McGuinn chose "No Derivative Works."
However, Larry Lessig would take that right away, from a post to his blog:
"Should the law give DJ Danger Mouse the right to remix without permission? I think so, though I understand how others find the matter a bit more grey."
"Should the law give DJ Danger Mouse a compulsory right to remix? That is, the right, conditioned upon his paying a small fee per sale? Again, I think so, and again, you might find this a bit less grey."
So, what exactly does Creative Commons mean by "some rights reserved" -- would it perhaps be more accurate if they said: "some rights reserved until we can change the laws to take those rights away"?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Wow, I envy your certainty. I've come to find this whole question much more baffling. I used to take software and find ways to use it anyway I wanted. It's incredibly easy to find lots of resources on the net that will provide everything from serials to professional quality reverse engineering tutorials. One day I made myself take a hard look at what I was doing. The truth is that if you are aware of the author's wishes, if you understand that in return for the value you receive from using the program he is asking you to abide by those wishes, and that downloading and using the software is your agreement to the exchange, then violating those wishes is dishonorable. I got rid of my jacked, hacked, and cracked programs. Now I pay if I can't live without the code or it's just so elegant I can't help myself. Mostly I use freeware. You know what? In most cases it's really not as good as the commercial solution. How often have you seen the first few versions of an app as freeware and the perfected product gone commercial. Look I know I have just committed /. heresy, but romantic notions of 'freedom of information' and 'the right to copy, share, and distribute information is a right!" are not tautologies. You make many broad sweeping statements, but most of them are lacking in proof or pertinence.
You overstate your opponent's position by suggesting that they claim that there is "no incentive" to produce creative content without copyright rewards. How about less incentive? Can you deny that some very creative works were undertaken explictly to reap those rewards? Many creative processes now require a vast amount of resources - too many resources for individuals to provide. Groups that provide those resources usually do so with the expectation of a return on their investment. It might be nice if they did it with the intention of giving the knowledge away to benefit society, but that's just not the case. Shouting from the rooftops that it should be this way does not make it so. You make your arguments seem devious and weak by not acknowledging the reality that profits from copyrights DO create incentives. Moreover, often the people who possess the necessary personalities to amass the resources are motivated primarily by profit - that's why they have all the resources. Certainly a great deal of creative work is done for other reasons, maybe even the best creative work, but to ignore the motivating power of good old greed is ridiculous.
You also seem to believe that creative content springs spontaneously into being without underlying costs. You say that information does not have natural limits of supply. I say we've got all the creative content we're going to get from Albert Einstein, he reached the natural limit on his supply of time. The fact that the cost of creating must be borne up front, during the process, does not lessen the amount required. It's hard for a man to be creative when he has to spend half his time feeding his family and has to decide between materials for The Project and health care for his kids. On a more selfish note, if I can do something you can't by applying my time and effort, why should you receive the same benefits without sharing the costs? The copyright only gives me the right to set the value on the material, it's up to you to decide if it's worth the price of admission.
Posts gettin' a little long so.....How can someone who possesses 'artistic genius' require the use of someone else's material to express that genius? Isn't it more likely that those that " copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed". have more to blame on the quality of their work than their access to someone else's? What in the hell does saying bad things about the king have to do with modern copyright issues? Is it valid to compare the Renaissance, when copies were made at great expense by hand exclusively for the ruling class, and the case of Dave from Topeka, who has 2000 ripped songs on his hard drive and takes great pleasure in giving them to anyone in
You make the assumption that in a world without copyright content-creators will not be able to gain any monetary benefit from their works.
I say this is flat out wrong. Creative people of all walks of life, in all societies have always been able to make a living. Artists who create things that people like will be elevated in status and supported by those who want to see them continue to create art.
Money spend previously on the sham that is the record industry will be freed up, the same in many other areas. It no longer makes economic sense to continue to pay for records and things that are inefficient, and anti-free market. Imagine the amounts of money and resources spent on content. These resources will be allowed to be spent in new and better ways.
Copyright restrictions on a song or a book are just ridiculous from a free-market perspective. If all of a sudden one day we found a method to create "free" energy, we should move to the new method. Keeping an inefficient production system around simply because it is the way we have always done things and you want to protect the jobs of people in the energy industry makes no sense at all.
When textile mills and outsource-able jobs are no longer efficient or make sense, we simply move to a new system of doing things. Why must we continue to prop up a woefully inefficient system of IP rights that merely serves to restrict a more sensible method?
If by punching you in the face I could cause no injury and also create grains of rice, then punching you in the face would be a grand thing to do.