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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.'"
The culture is effected by the media and the content in it. A great example of this is the fact that the media was able to turn the word 'liberal' into a profanity. Language is perception, and the media controls the perception of most of the people.
Whatever it is that Lessig is selling, John and Jane Sixpack ain't gonna be buying.
Shit, CNN/Foxnews will make sure they don't even see it!
Right. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of forked Robert Jordan novels. shudder
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Copyright laws are just like unions now. In the beginning, they both had their use, but as timee have changed, copyright laws, like unions have not adapted to suit current conditions. In the end, they cause more bad than good. Hello GM!
http://psychicfreaks.com/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
Really, now...while I feel the creative landscape would be a much brighter place if copyrights didn't last indefinitely, I don't see Lessig proposing any real plan here. 14 years renewable to 28 sounds fair to me, but I'm part of the choir in this situation, and I don't see any indication that our lawmakers are going to be receptive to this. To my knowledge, one of the major reasons for the lengthening of copyright terms in the US is that we needed to bring our laws in line with the copyright laws in Europe, and nothing is changing there.
There are billion dollar interests at stake here. I'm glad that there are academics like Lessig that want to stand up for their principles, but unless he's planning to raise the funds for a massive lobbying campaign, I think he's fighting a losing battle...
The most realistic part is definitely the bit about requiring people to register for copyrights, but I worry about this - if you need to register, chances are you'll need to pay. Even if it's just a little, I'm not in favor of giving the government more knobs to turn...I fear that this particular step would only further help the moneyed interests at the expense of the little guy.
every historical era is defined by an ideological struggle which defines the status quo of future eras. in our time, that struggle is the balance between corporate ownership and public culture. the riaa/ mpaa won't stop until they own all of our culture, period. every single bit of expression of it. every venue, every time period
what lessig gets but many don't is that it is a trade off: financial wealth versus cultural wealth. ip law makes sense because it rewards creators for creating. but the balance gets lost when ip law is extended unnaturally into areas of content expression and lengths of time which are totally unreasonable
then the social compact between those who consume culture and those who create it, becomes null and void. the ip lawyers are crushing the natural free exchange of ideas that lead to cultural wealth, and eventually financial wealth, and their corporate masters don't understand how they are shooting themselves in the foot by giving these ip lawyers free reign to extend, extend, extend their grasp. the corporate masters don't seem to understand that, paradoxically, by extending ip law unnaturally, ip lawyers are effectively handing their corporate masters diminishing returns over the long run: decreased cultural wealth eventually leads to decreased financial wealth
its a pathology: greed, greed, greed, and it will never stop, until it kills cultural wealth in the name of financial wealth, even if that means that eventually, financial wealth is sacrificed too. because the financial masters don't really understand how the free exchange of ideas in a respected, natural, reasonable cultural public spaced eventually enriches them. they just have an unthinking pathological allegiance to the concept of bloated ownership, with no appreciation for the nuances of how respecting a free zone of cultural trading creates more riches for them to own in the long rin
unfortunately, this struggle is too esoteric now, too new to have reached the man in the street yet. only us dweebs and tech heads see the outrageousness of this creeping doom on the horizon right now. but give it time. eventually it will rear its ugly head on the radar of public consciousness
and then maybe, hopefully, this pathology that is ip law that wants to own absolutely every bit of cultural expression will get the bitch slap down it deserves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This will require a paradigm shift from the sole creator and possesor of a 'natural right' of control and ownership of ideas.
Coders collaborate to create complex things whereas artists are often individualistic sorts, possesie of their ideas. As an art student my college would not mark 'collaborative' works as they could not figure out how to apportion credit.
Open source Creativity has occured but the very word Artist has a certain idea of sole author - seemingly this came about in the Rennaissance. When Vasari started bigging up Michelangelo.
Before this it was believed that Authorship was a kind of heresy as God was the Prime Creator. Many Artists and Author before then saw themselves as part of a stream of culture and thought. They would attribute their works to historical figures or were anonymous.
The Public Domain has fallen into disrepute, it is a kind of 'bin' were all the old stuff ends up. Copyright a limited monopoly for publishers, a concession by the public was concieved to enrich this public sphere. Now Copyright is seen by many as a sort of natural right of creators.
Better to believe that you stand apon the shoulders of giants, that personal art derives from the canon of language, culture, folk-music that once was commonly owned by all ( or rather the nature of property was inimicable to ideas ).
Interestingly Publicly funded Science has moved away from the public domain and instead of researchers publishing findings for the common weal they patent with their University.
While dreams of rich patents may provide investment funds to inventors, consider that the price of research has increased astronomically as progress accelerates there are more sub-patents to be liscensed (or withheld to prevent rival research).
Now there are so many Patent & Copyright Squatters who neither create nor fund creators but use law to leech fees from those who do.
Thank goodness you can't patent software or algorythms (in Europe anyway).
Copyright is theft from the Public domain.
It used to be that we got some payback, now we just pay and pay and pay.
I think the key concept in intellectual property laws should be that the creations *must* enter public domain at some time, and remain in the public domain forecer after that. Therefore, the law should provide no protection at all to anything that's protected by anything other than the law itself, or for that which isn't fully disclosed.
No copyrights for anything distributed with any sort of DRM, no copyrights for anything distributed under proprietary standards, no protection for any software distributed without source code.
There are more than one issue here:
No, it's 'is,' not 'are.' Since 'issue' is singular, you need to use 'is.' If you said that there were many issues here, then you'd use 'are,' because 'issues' is plural.
Ability to create content and distribute it , exclusively, for profit, for a period of time.
Supposing I write a significantly different story, using existing concepts in only a vague way, and develop (or discover) a market for that story, I should be able to tap into that market, exclusively, for a given period of time. The idea is "mine" (humanly speaking), and supposing the content isn't prurient (e.g. child porn), or a damn lie (e.g. telling you that the Olsen Twins are morbidly obese) or some other nasty damnable shite ("I murdered Bob's wife! Here's how & all the details"), I have every right to profit from it.
First, n.b. that copyright doesn't protect ideas. Second, you haven't provided any support for your assertion that you should have an exclusive right merely because you came up with the idea. Remember, if you want exclusivity, you are essentially asking everyone else in the world to refrain, and to create laws (which you could not create on your own) that establish that exclusivity. While I am not averse to doing so, I won't unless you can show me that I am better off being excluded than I would be if there was no exclusive right. Of course, you have every right to profit from your creation, but exclusivity is another matter altogether.
Ability to maintain the integrity of content.
Joe's brother, Ed, cannot copy my book, change all of the "I have"'s to "I have not"'s or change the meaning in some other way and republish it under my name.
Meh. That's more a trademark or publicity right issue than a copyright issue.
Mixing / excerpting Joe can copy small excerpts of my book when writing a review, or larger portions with my permission. Were this music, he would be legally more restricted in rebroadcasting because of the medium. Print has its own restrictions, because it's a physical medium.
Why the different treatment? I don't see any material differences. If I can make collage out of photos, say, why shouldn't I be able to make collage out of music, or text?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Sidewalk entertainers.
Fan Fiction (yes, it existed before the Internet)
Graffiti Art
There were tons of people who created and gave away their creations before the Internet. The difference is that before the Internet only people right nearby KNEW about them. Their was no ultra-cheap/free distribution method to get the creations of these people out into the hands of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other people.
Many writers existed making stories for free. They wrote stories, books, novels... and were either uninterested or incompitent in trying to get them published. So who got to read them? Their family, neighbors, and friends. And that's it.
Many artists existed making paintings and drawings for free. Who saw them? Their family, neighbors, and friends. And that's it.
Many musicians existed who gave their music away for free or cost on casette tapes and such. Who heard them? Their family, neighbors, and friends, and maybe the local bars. And that's it.
People creating stuff for others, and giving it away for nothing or almost nothing, have always existed. But until the Internet, only a few people nearby knew about them. You probably knew someone yourself who fits this description (at least, if you're old enough to have known lots of people before 1995). Now, these same people can reach millions with a little technical savvy, or a friend with that savvy.
The Internet has made us the neighbors of everyone on the 'Net. We're all just one step away from everyone else. Just a visit, a quick jaunt across the street to read the latest writings, hear the newest song, or see the newest painting of that guy next door.
So nothing has changed. We just have more neighbors now.
The Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Now how is big media "locking up" YOUR culture?
For a full explanation, read Lessig's book "Free Culture", but the brief version is: Culture has always been built upon previous culture. New art is not only based on old art, but the most interesting parts are usually in the variations. If it's illegal to base new works on old works (because they're forever locked up by copyright, DRM, etc.), then the only people who can create new works are those who own the old. The media industry therefore becomes a self-perpetuating cartel. Even the very rare completely new creation just gets absorbed into the same mass of cultural protectionism.
Second I find it funny that slashdot defines IT'S culture in terms of what big business produces. Third I find it insulting that slashdot presumes that what others produce belongs to IT.
I don't understand these statements, and I'm pretty sure the first one is flat wrong.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
To write a program that generated _huge_ (TBs) amounts of content; speaches/essays/articles about the current state of politics including the real players out there today, and what's really going on and copyright them. Then sue anyone who you don't agree with politically who writes an article that comes close enough to your generated content that their 'political free speach' could be considered infringing.
Could it technically work? What would those cases do to the laws?
How can we convince people that copyright laws are out of wack when they legally can't sing 'happy birthday' to their kids at their birthday party without paying royalties...
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Your premise is incorrect because you don't understand copyright.
Hehe... I understand copyright *very* well. About as well as anyone who isn't an IP lawyer, I think.
The ONLY thing that big media can LOCK UP is stuff they've created.
Plus anything that can be argued is derived from it. Seriously, read "Free Culture". Start with the introduction, about Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" and Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill, Jr.".
Remember you all are talking about content created by big business, not small time content creators. And the last is that none of the complainers had a hand in the creaton of the content they claim as their culture.
You're using too narrow a definition of "culture". Everything that gets published and becomes widespread is part of our culture. But much of it is off-limits for extension, enhancement, modification, etc. Until it's 100 years old, anyway, and maybe not even then, given continual extension, DRM, etc.
Seriously. Read "Free Culture". If you don't mind reading from a screen, it's a free download. Or you can download it and print it. Or buy a bound copy in the bookstore. Whatever. Read it.
If they want free culture as much as they want free software, then the solution is the same in both cases. Create it yourself instead of pirating commercial software.
Software is actually much easier to handle, because (so far) the laws and the courts haven't decided that making software that is similar to something else is infringement. That's not the case with movies, stories and music. Using a baseline lifted from another song is copyright infringement (David Bowie vs Vanilla Ice). Using a similar storyline is copyright infringement (see the case about the Harry Potter knockoffs). Using characters with the same, or even similar names is copyright infringement.
The media industry has gotten copyright stretched to where it no longer serves the public interest.
Since OSS is part of MY culture, can I treat it like public domain?
Nope, and you shouldn't be able to, not without the author's permission. However, you can read it, learn from it, and write your own software that uses the ideas, algorithms, etc. from it. Or you can do whatever else you want within the license. Or you should be able to wait a short period of time for it to enter the public domain. I think copyright law should make sure you have the same freedom with all copyrighted software (copyright protection should require source disclosure).
Copyright is an excellent idea and a useful tool, but only when it's structured so that it serves the public interest. Right now, it's not structured that way. It needs to be fixed, and Lessig has some great ideas about how.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I think it was Joni Mitchell at the '71 Isle of Wight festival who asked gate crashers why they expected her and others to perform for free. It's a nice utopian thought that cultural creators would share everything with everyone, but most creators have to worry about paying the rent. Now Joni Mitchell probably didn't have too much to worry about in that regard, but I think her point is still valid. Getting rid of copyright won't help people pay the rent. If you want to propose a system of generously distributed grants and stipends to cultural creators, an anarchistic or communist reorganisation of society, or even something like the WPA projects for writers and artists that's fine -- and much more realistic than saying culture ought to be free. Culture is not going to be free until people are free to make it. Tinkering around with the length of the copyrights isn't going to change the situation, either.
I fully realise that in the end most creators end up working for nothing or taking a loss and that copyright doesn't do anything for them -- but neither will "free culture" or shorter copyrights. People make culture, but people have bills to pay and kids to feed. I'd work for free too if I didn't have to worry about groceries, rent, day care, saving for retirement...