Lessig - Public Domain Dead in 35 Years

tcd004 writes "Lawrence Lessig, in an article on the Foreign Policy site, predicts that the public domain will die a slow death at the hands of anti-piracy efforts. From the article: 'The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death, extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even recognize it is gone.'"

Comments

Re:Going to die?

[anthony_dipierro]

Plenty of things fall into the public domain every second of every day. In fact, I'm going to release this post into the public domain right now.

Maybe in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

But as we've seen from the chaos in new orleans, USA'ians are hardly the ones to dictate anything to the rest of the world about how to behave.

Do NOT obey the laws.

[DroopyStonx]

Seriously...

Shit like this happens based on pure greed, and they expect us to sit there and blindly follow the law? Hah.

Even people on slashdot that are always siding with the RIAA on those piracy stories.. how can you justify this?

The law is only good for so much, people. You CAN ignore it without consequence, you know..

I'm stealing IP all my life

[Elixon]

Intellectual property CANNOT BE OWNED. It can be hidden from others and secured but nobody has the right to stop others redevelop or reinvent the same IP.

Bible says that there is no new things, everything already existed in some form or another. I'm very surprised that Americans are those propagating IP and turning IP into dollars labeled as "In God We Trust"(tm). I dought that humans can "invent" or "create" something in the real sense. People are rather "finding" and "understanding" the world, universe, themselves.

If you "find" some way to do something you can hide it from others. But if somebody else will succeed in "finding" the same solution by himself/herself then it is NOT right to sue him/her for "stealing" intellectual property. Because the "intellectual property" cannot be reserved/owned because it is an "idea/word". Other people MUST be allowed to do what you had been granted to do. If you were allowed to invent something how you can prevent somebody else from doing the same thing?

Thoughts are Words. Man cannot think without Words. If Thoughts/Words can be owned then I steel from my mother and father, from everybody I meet in my life... And, at the beginning there was the Word, right? Who will be the first to claim ownership over the Word that was at the beginning? :-) Who'll dare it? I'm sure that the lawmakers will make it possible soon. :-) :-) Philosophical question. Are you sure that you own at least ONE ORIGINAL THOUGHT that you created? Are you? If you do so, are you sure that this ORIGINAL THOUGHT was not the result of other thoughts given to you by your teachers, mother, father, friends,...? Shouldn't you reconsider to pay some royalty fees for everything you say and think?

Writing this short imperfect post with my imperfect English cost me $53.5 in royalty fees, because I used partially thoughts of other great people I met in my life (virtualy or personaly) and the rest is just the "derivative work". :-)