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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.'"
Now we all concern about digital world rights ... but we also have to admit the very old fact that "Every lock has a fake key"..
"Lessig: This is not a constitutional question in the Grokster case at all. The Grokster case is just a question of whether the court should apply a secondary liability on the manufacturer because the product was used illegally by a customer."
Out of intrest , are the makers of guns liable.
if not then why not and then why should p2p companys, With a gun you can break far greater laws than with emule .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
This is resampling the digital text of the alphabet, am I infringing? I often ponder, Opps, there is someone at the door, hold on.....
... how this article for me loaded with an audio-enabled ad for Vonage that created a derivative work in my headphones over top of Radiohead.... hrmm... Did they have a license to do that in my ears?
It sounds just like: Every kitchen tools producers need to be sued because some of their customers use those tools in 55% of murder cases.
For quite some time now I have been of the opinion that the prohibition of the creation if derivative works that copyright imposes is outside of the understanding of the original concept, and in addition to being insainly dangerious to society, is also unconstituional. ... Actually, I should qualify what I just said, I am not just of the opinion that the prohibition is unconstitutional, I believe it is, in fact, a direct violation of the Natural Law. It is, in fact, morally evil on some level to prevent other's from re-interpreting pre-existing creative-thoughts into their own, substantially new ideas.
I may be completely alone in my views, and I appreciate that they do not mess with the common-sense morality of our culture (cf. authors and Movie rights, for example). But I do think it is a place where discussion can begin.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
In any case, I would like to draw out the comparison a bit further. Nathan the Wise was Lessing's play in favor of religious toleration, expanding what was allowable thought at the time. Lessing may have been wrong about a lot, but pushing that envelope was a great thing. Lessig too risks his reputation by pushing the envelope. In the future, we will probably see intellectual property law very differently, thanks to the discussions going on now.
...it's a shame it's necessary. Why is it that if I'm writing my blog, I can take any paragraph of text in the world, quote it, then tear it a part, but if I'm making a song and I sample 1 second's worth of The Beatles, my ass will be in court before the third chord progression?
It's definitely a step in the right direction that Lessig has codified the Creative Commons license, allowing us to make things like Wikipedia and one or two music sites, but really the CCL doesn't give us any rights that we shouldn't already have under Fair Use anyway. I mean, Walt Disney has been dead for 30 years. Why the hell can't I draw Mickey Mouse smoking a joint if I want to? Why is Magnavox still able to get license fees from people making video game consoles? Why does Nintendo still own the D-pad and A+B buttons? And what's up with Apple paying Amazon for one click shopping in iTunes? It's all just so ridiculous.
I recognize the need for some limited monopoly to spur innovation, but it's clear that at this point IP has spun out of control. Thank goodness for people like Lessig, Groklaw, and the EFF!
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
Eventually, things will become so draconian that companies and independant (often open source) developers are afraid to develop software in America, from fears of breaking things like the DMCA or being charged with "Software Patent Infringency" that they'll have to create new silicon valleys elsewhere in places that don't care.
Europe would be a nice setting, depending on how that turns out, but who knows? Bright young programmers could be fleeing persecution for their works in the USA to set up shop in Bangalore, where they'd probably be able to live like kings. Either way, the way things are going, only monolithic corporations will still be putting out software.
If the US government decides to ban the sale of what everyone else in the world is using, then they'll only fall behind in technology overall...
- - - - - Fear not the reaper, but my shiny white teeth.
If they said there was no incentive to do good things unless the government could choose your religion ... or they said there is no incentive to grow food, unless farmers could rip up your garden ... most people would see these as the awful values that they are. But if they say that there is no incentive to make beneficial or creative works without the power to restrict what people copy (copyrights), then all too many people just take it on faith. They don't even question it, as if incentive makes rights, as if society would fall apart without them. But just as much of the Renaissance happened without copyrights so should the information age.
Calling copyrights "intellectual property" is intellectually dishonest. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from mutual respect and the fact that not everybody can posses something at the same time. The foundation of copyrights derives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. Copyrights are about control, censorship, and not a free market property. In fact, they cheapen property rights by treating things that have natural limits in supply such as food, shelter, and medicine like information that does not.
Worse, is how people who copy are slandered with names such as "thief" and "pirate", as if copying was akin to boarding a ship and murdering people. They are even accused of stealing food out of the mouths of starving artists. Yet these verbal assaults hide a cold and calculated lie, the one that says "copyrights benefit creative people". The truth is that for every artist or writer that has made it "big", there are unmentioned thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even bared or sued from sharing their own creations in public, others die with the world never truly knowing their artistic genius as the mass media drowns them out. Most creators are far better off sharing and distributing their creations freely to make a reputation for themselves. Copyrights not only cause them to be drowned out in a sea of hype, but do so deceptively.
However, these aren't the only problems related to copyrights. They are just a sample of many that are constantly blown off, glossed over, or ignored. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to offer quality material, the failures of the market to offer competitively priced books for college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few. Their hypocritical pleas like, "how will we make money without copyrights?" is like a mobster asking "how will I make money with out victims extort?"
The burdens of imposing copyrights might have been bearable a quarter century ago when the biggest issue was copy machines. But today in the information age there is no technical distinction between copyright content and free speech content. Information is so easy to copy and manipulate, there can be no "middle ground".Our society must make a choice: Our communications will either half to be monitored or free, our privacy will either half to intruded or protected. Our speech, writing, and free expression will either half to be abridged or unabridged. Any institution that has the power to control one, must have the power to control all. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it of at the root!
Consider parallels to other periods of transition like the industrial revolution:
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was true,the industrial revolution demanded a mobile and skilled workforce.
First, they responded by making
It's Oscar (tm) night eve and the MPAA wonks are coked up and have mod points.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I can't decide where we need Lawrence Lessig more... in the White House or on the Supreme Court bench...
"Eventually, things will become so draconian that companies and independant (often open source) developers are afraid to develop software in America, from fears of breaking things like the DMCA or being charged with "Software Patent Infringency" that they'll have to create new silicon valleys elsewhere in places that don't care."
Excuse me?
My dear fellow, with all due respect, you are simply wrong on this matter. The future is here. I am an Open Source developer. And I have a great idea that I'd like to take to market.
I already AM afraid of bringing this to market, due to bogus patent lawsuits, and the financial losses which will result to me personally.
So what can I do? The ONLY way this can happen now in the U.S. is by Open Source. And I need to make certain that I transfer the copyright over to the FSF, as is recommended with the GPL.
Furthermore, I also need to start up a company, incorporate it, and follow all the onerous rules about State filings, stock issuance, Tax ID number, payroll, and whatnot, just to insulate my personal finances. Yes, I could avoid this step, but I have enough personal assets that I really need to do this.
All for a relatively simple and useful solution in a particular niche, which has received a lot of positive interest and some press.
If you want a first-hand look at the negative effect of Software Patents and bogus lawsuits are inpacting creativity on the cutting edge, look no further.
The other sadly amusing side effect is that there is absolutely no way that I could take this via a proprietary route. Back in the 80's and 90's, I could build up a company myself without being forced to go to a VC. Now I can't. I'm positive some two-bit thief of a lawyer would come along with a bogus patent and want some money. I can't afford this personally. And so, the closed-source route is no longer viable for innovation, except on the large-scale level.
What further proof does anyone want at how innovation is being stifled?
And yes, if the EU actually does reject Software Patents, I'm going over there as soon as I can. Not to go the closed source route; but just for the piece of mind.
Yes, I'm worried. And if you aren't (and are in the U.S.), you're either not doing innovative work, or are sticking your head in the sand.
Fortunately not. When a license says you can't copy stuff, or a storage medium is copy-protected, more people may pay up for an original. But at the same time, other people may get annoyed, and copy stuff precisely because it's forbidden. So you put something out, and it will be copied. Period.
Funny: the reverse is also true. You grant some rights that people otherwise wouldn't have (I'm talking GPL or Creative Commons here), on the condition that they obey some rules, and guess what: those rules get ignored too. For software, the BusyBox Hall of Shame is just one example.
The only thing licenses, copy-protections etc. do, is keep lawyers busy, and (somewhat) influence the economics involved. But no matter what rules copyright holders come up with, most people don't care, and these rules are ignored. Just check how few people actually read licenses.
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
My feeling is if you don't like the way things are copyrited and/or the way a particular industry works, stop using their products. The entertainment industry acts like a drug pusher protecting his turf, or a Mafia guy making businesses in a corrupted neghborhood pay "protection" fees. Take their power away by stopping drug use and/or moving to an uncorrupted neighborhood. The sad fact is that the entertainment industry is making billions of dollars off of mediocre product because they have millions of addicts. It's like fast food -- the fast food keeps getting worse as more and more people eat it.
"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
the only marker the RIAA have for how much piracy is hurting them is the fall in sales or profit. A boycott will merely make you a probable pirate.
I keep getting hassled by the TV licensing authority for not having a license for my TV. However, their only proof of my having a TV is that other people do.
...intellectual property granting, licensings is a legal oriented document of agreement. Though there are things in any legal document that might be non-binding due to priority of other legal issues, the point is, is that it is a document of agreement by those who use it.
No document should be able to allow the signing away of natural human rights or such rights that fit needed freedoms in any given economic environment, such as a fair competition economic environment (i.e. probably quite a few of MS's created agreements with OEMs, etc.. contridicting fair competition as was presented in the DOJ vs. MS case..)
But here is the key point:
"..if we didn't build upon what those before us have done, we then would not advance at all, but rather be like any other mammal incapable of anything more than, at best, first level abstraction. But we are more, and as such have the natural human right and duty to advance in such a manner."
from abstraction physics"
We've had approximations of "free markets" for millenia, but "capitalism" properly refers to capital, ie. property. Simply put, IP is ambiguous, even slightly antithetical to the concept of a free market (emphasis: freedom), whilst it is entirely in the spirit of capitalism (the prevalence of property and property rights).
Wikileaks, no DNS
No really, IP was always supposed to be a limited concession to encourage publishing of art and inventions.
Things that would be in the public domain have had the length of their copyright extended, rewriting the 'contract' after the agreed exclusivity benefits have been enjoyed.
Patents are in a similar position not because of extension but the fact that with more rapid progress after that after the 20 years of exclusiviry they can be irrelevant.
There are a whole raft of inventions that cannot be made because it uneconomic to liscense all the technologies involved and art that cannot be made because either rights will not be granted or are too expensive. Documentaries and Modern music most obviously suffer a lot from this because they directly sample things. Clasical composers though have run afoul of such things as they sample melodies to compose their works and Bebop and Jazz with its standards probably would be unable to evolve in todays aggressive climate.
Even worse than cripling the evolution of human culture Intellectual Property inhibits research into medicines that could save millions due to having to liscense many different patented genes - to do basic research into breast and other cancers. These Genes were not 'invented' just sequenced - imagine Newton patenting Gravity and you see how wrong this is. It is not a cost of recouping research costs, it is more akin to 'cyber-squatting' the human genome.
Intellectual Property impedes progress, it inhibits the economy, it is not the free market it is the creation of monopolies with incredible penalties associated with those guilty of copyright infringement.
Monopolies are a bad thing for consumers, Government enforced Monopolies are worse.
P.S. I stole all these ideas from others, even the ones I believed were original are heavily derived from preexisting thought.
But especial theft thanks goes to Freedom of Expression be Kembrew McCloud http://kembrew.com/books/ which is very readable has well documented examples of all the above and is available for money or for free.
Prof. Lessig has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak. He is offering his latest book, Free culture, as a free download. You can get it as a 2.4MB PDF, a bittorrent, or a in a bunch of other formats. Enjoy.
" ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.l #bgates91
If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.
"
This was quoted by Fred Warshofsky in "The Patent Wars" of 1994. The text is from an internal memo written by Bill Gates to his staff. Part of has appeared in another Gates memos.
http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/index.en.htm
And Lessig misses this point, as he is trying for compromise.
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Some related issues:
If copyrights impose a burden on society (like real estate), why not tax them annually at some self-assessed buyout value (the cost the copyright holder would be content with to have the work in the public domain)?
Oh, but copyright holders might protest they can not fairly evaluate the copyright as some copyrights make a lot of money, and most do not. But there we have it -- the notion of copyright as a lottery ticket which the essay touches on. Do we want creative works funded as lotteries?
Also, with the increasing use of automation and robotics, people are less and less needed to produce things, so ultimately most people will become out of work in our society -- unless they get a guaranteed income in terms of a part of the production of the automated systems. If people had such a guaranteed income, then they would not need an incentive to create digital works, and they would not need to receive royalties from copyrights just to get the basics of food, water, shelter, education, manufactured goods, and medical care for themselves and their children.
So the future you are talking about is bound up into issues like a guaranteed income or fair share of rapidly increasing industrial productivity. So essentially a "Star Trek" like society, with matter replicators -- which are at most ten or twenty years away, as people are using limited prototypes of them now. Remember, thirty years ago, for most people there was no such thing as desktop publishing or local printing. Now you typically get a printer bundled for "free" with a computer. Thirty years from now, it may seem as ludicrous to get something other than raw materials delivered or to go out to shop for an object as it would seem now to have one-off printing done at some remote computer center (as was typical thirty years ago).
Related links:
The Abolition of Work
http://www.deoxy.org/endwork.htm
Robot Nation
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
The Dream Factory: Any product, any shape, any size - manufactured on your desktop!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/view.htm
Getting Paid in Our Jobless Future: Only a guaranteed basic income can ensure economic growth, technological innovation and social welfare
http://betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Change_S
US BIG: The basic income guarantee (BIG) is a government insured guarantee that no citizen's income will fall below some minimal level for any reason. All citizens would receive a BIG without means test or work requirement. BIG is an efficient and effective solution to poverty that preserves individual autonomy and work incentives while simplifying government social policy. Some researchers estimate that a small BIG, sufficient to cut the poverty rate in half could be financed without an increase in taxes by redirecting funds from spending programs and tax deductions aimed at maintaining incomes.
http://www.usbig.net/
More discussion of "BIG" - Basic Income Guarantee (source of some links)
http://novogate.com/exco/thread.php?forumid=5374&
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
a few years ago, chuck-d announced a contest on napster to remix a PE song. the contest was the first of it's kind on napster, i believe. it was open, interestingly, only to US citizens.
i wrote to chuck and stated my dismay, first about not being able to enter, since i like to create music and was a big PE fan, and secondly (to what i now give greater importance) about the inherent contradiction in what he was suggesting about the philosophy of freedom regarding sampling and remixing, but yet limiting the musicians who were allowed to enter the contest to the political border of the united states!
in order to emphasize my point, i ended my note with a quote from one of PE's first - "false media, we don't need it do we? - no we don't chuck, no we don't" and i thought that made some sense at that time.
i was surprised a day or so later when an aid of chuck's responded to me and said that he had spoke directly to chuck about my note, and that chuck had in fact agreed, and the rules had been changed on napster to reflect that the contest was now open to ANYBODY! also, shortly thereafter, chuck used the slogan "empowering the global hip-hop nation" - a slogan i feel i played an influence in him coming up with.
to see chuck being involved in this creative-commons remix contest again today, with the support of several other commercially successful artists makes me feel somwhat inspired again today too, and i support it for what that is worth - greetings>