Lessig's "In Defense of Piracy"

chromakey writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an essay from Lawrence Lessig about the fair use of copyrighted material on the Internet. He makes the case that companies who go to extreme lengths to squash minor videos, such as Universal, are stifling creativity in the modern era. Lessig makes specific reference to a YouTube video that was hit by a DMCA takedown notice, in which a 13-month-old child is dancing to a nearly inaudible soundtrack of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy.' Lawrence Lessig is a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

Comments

FYI, Lessig left the EFF board

[harlows_monkeys]

According to the submitter's blurb:

Lawrence Lessig is a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

According to TFA:

She pressed that question through a number of channels until it found its way to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (on whose board I sat until the beginning of 2008)

Value and Existing are not the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are confusing (conflating) existing with value.

Existing is a property of the physical world.

Value is a human construct.

They are not the same thing, at least in the way these words are used by most educated people, which is about the best measure for meaning we have.

It is the deriving, the shaping, that adds the value. Your use of the word 'just' is misleading here - that activity is the whole point.

So - you are simply wrong.

Or, if you prefer, I, and from my experience most intelligent people, disagree with you.

A Fair(y) Use Tale

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't possibly be the only one who remembers A Fair(y) Use Tale can I?

Re:Why should everything bring a profit?

[rohan972]

Only until it becomes practical to do that. [charge for oxygen produced by plants on farms]

The idea has been only slightly modified and is being marketed as "carbon credits".