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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.'"
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