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.'"

Comments

Free Culture

[joeytsai]

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.

Re:Free Culture

[SillyNickName4me]

So please let me explain the ugly truth: this is an all or nothing game. Either the copyright lords are going to control how we use information, or they aren't. Sorry charlie, there is no nice way out there is no happy middle ground. Get used to it, wake up and smell the hummis, pull your head out, quit being stupid! All or nothing. Sony, the RIAA, and MPAA seem to understand this perfectly well, their actions are obvious, they plan on it, they act on it, they clearly understand it, so why don't we?

Your observation about it being an all or nothing game is correct, but I don't think you are correct in your conclusion.

First of all, abolishing copyright will do nothing to remove the desire for distributors to have complete and infinite control over distribution and preferably also use. This is because copyright is merely the means by which this control is currently achieved.

Second, copyright based on the constitution of the USA can only exist if you recognize that the 'public' is in ultimate control over any copyrighted works, else the whole concept of granting temporary exclusive rights to the creator makes no sense (you may be able to grant rights over something over which you have no control on paper, but your lack of control makes that a completely pointless thing to do), so if copyright has to be, then the question over who has ultimate control over created works is already answered.

At any rate, the article was (unsurprisingly) lacking in detail, and failed to make any argument for the alternative that was proposed (or for or against copyright in general). It merely points at one of the problems and an obvious solution to it. The implication of what the article says is that 'initially, copyright as it was in the 1700s was good, so lets change back to how it was back then'. Of course that ignores that circumstances have changed substantially. I, just like Lessig it seems, believe that a limited term, limited scope copyright can actually work and advance science and arts. Additionally, I also believe that copyright should always go to the actual creator(s) and be non-transferable. On top of that, I believe anyone who wants to have something protected by copyright, will have to ensure that the work will be available in unencumbered form after expiration of that copyright, if things like drm or other forms of access control are permitted at all.

I'm with you, but what's the plan?

[ClassMyAss]

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.

Re:I'm with you, but what's the plan?

[kfg]

. . .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

The question is should we have done this? Especially since the copyright laws of Europe were (and are) antithetical to American legal philosophy. They are founded on the medieval monarchial grant/guild system of rights. It seems strange to me that we should export "American values" at the point of a gun in some places, but refuse to actually hold our simple moral ground at home. In this case I think we should have made Europe come to us.

I fear that this particular step would only further help the moneyed interests at the expense of the little guy.

History shows just the opposite. If nothing else look what Lessig did with This Land is Your Land.

The primal philosophy is that of free speach. To get a grant to abrogate this you should have to actually petition the government for the rights of monopoly. Yes, there is a fee involved, but it has always been reasonable to cover filing costs and not a center of control/profit. A teenager can cover the fee by mowing a single lawn and the forms are simple; and free.

The automatic creation of copyright has also created a world of abuse by the big guy against the little guy, the big guy sometimes being the government. Internal memos and such showing criminal action and culpability are now being supressed using their copyright status as justification. Civil lawsuits have skyrocketed where none would have been filable previously over purely incidental "works" little more than someone's laundry list.

Copyright should only be applied to those works that the creator himself thinks important enough to go through the trouble of filing and said works should then be free to public access.

That, after all, was the whole original point. That protected works would be made available to the public, put on file in the Library of Congress, rather than hidden away. Conversely anything that the creator wants hidden away (like evidence of criminal activity) should not be granted protection.

KFG

exactly

[circletimessquare]

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

I beg to disagree

[mangu]

Distribution without a profit motive may cause a significant financial loss, as we are endlessly reminded by the media and software industry.

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.