Slashdot Mirror
Lessig On Free Content, Copyright
Glyn Moody writes "In an interview with the Guardian, Lawrence Lessig explains exactly how he'd like copyright reformed, and has this to say about free content: 'I think it's going to be a more significant movement than the free software movement because whatever the importance of the freedom of coders, coders will still be just a tiny proportion of the public, but culture is ... much broader.'"
Lawrence Lessig is awesome. If you don't know anything about him (or even if you do), I highly recommend watching his last talk given in 2002. You can hear him and see his slides here. Even if you're not into legal things like copyright (like me) his speech is fascinating and compelling.
http://www.talknerdy.org
Oh, nonono. Not libertarian. Lower-case l libertarian is just fine. Objectivist. They get really crabby if you don't capitalize the O. Ayn Rand was an Objectivist, not a libertarian.
I like libertarians. Objectivists...too much drinking of the Kool Aid.
I've been reading the Belisarius series by David Drake and friends. It's fun epic fantasy kinda-alternate-history goodness, and you can get the first four novels at the Baen free library. w00t.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
There is a law on the table (that may soon be voted in) that changes it so incidental copies (like, the COPY of /. that you are reading now that was COPIED over the internet to your browser, so it could display it to you) can be licensed separately, or can be disallowed/regulated, by copyright.
In other words, what used to be an automatic right, part of fair use (you're allowed to make copies in the course of normal use of a work), is now no longer a given... the person who creates the work can make it illegal to make even incidental copies in the normal course of accessing their work.
It's stupid. He also thinks it's stupid, and only copies made for commercial use should invoke copyright law.
The Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
That idea is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and has been dismissed by mainstream linguistics. See Language Myths , ed. Bauer and Trudgill (Penguin, 1999), and note the chapter about how changing meanings is a normal part of diachrony.
First of all it's speech, not speach. Second, no you cannot. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. This very important distinction is lost on your typical slashbot frothing at the mouth with the mere mention of the word copyright. As long as I do not actually use substantial sections of your work and claim it as my own or distribute it without your permission I'm OK when I write a scathing article about a politician that you also wrote a scathing article about.