Posted on 10/08/2002 3:21:38 PM PDT by Lizard_King
Editor's Note: In his address before a packed house at the Open Source Convention, Lawrence Lessig challenges the audience to get more involved in the political process. Lawrence, a tireless advocate for open source, is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and the founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. He is also the author of the best-selling book Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Here is the complete transcript of Lawrence's keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002.
(You can also download an MP3 version of this presentation (20.2MB).)
Advertisement Lawrence Lessig: I have been doing this for about two years--more than 100 of these gigs. This is about the last one. One more and it's over for me. So I figured I wanted to write a song to end it. But then I realized I don't sing and I can't write music. But I came up with the refrain, at least, right? This captures the point. If you understand this refrain, you're gonna' understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts:
*
Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. *
The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. *
Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. *
Ours is less and less a free society.
In 1774, free culture was born. In a case called Donaldson v. Beckett in the House of Lords in England, free culture was made because copyright was stopped. In 1710, the statute had said that copyright should be for a limited term of just 14 years. But in the 1740s, when Scottish publishers started reprinting classics (you gotta' love the Scots), the London publishers said "Stop!" They said, "Copyright is forever!" Sonny Bono said "Copyright should be forever minus a day," but the London publishers said "Copyright is forever."
These publishers, people whom Milton referred to as old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book selling, men who do not labor in an honest profession (except Tim here), to [them] learning is indebted. These publishers demanded a common-law copyright that would be forever. In 1769, in a case called Miller v. Taylor, they won their claim, but just five years later, in Donaldson, Miller was reversed, and for the first time in history, the works of Shakespeare were freed, freed from the control of a monopoly of publishers. Freed culture was the result of that case.
(Excerpt) Read more at oreillynet.com ...
----------------------------------
It should read copyright law against parasitism. There is a group of people in this world that want to confiscate other people's work for free. The movement against copyright is part of that.
In my life I have been paid many tens of thousands of dollars for my writing and analysis. I can't afford to do it for free. People can't afford to pay me when they must compete with criminals stealing my effort and giving it away for free.
Did you read the article? Skim it? At least try to understand the points it makes?
I didn't think so. But knee jerk reactions are what's important right?
To quote Lessig as he quotes JC Watts in the last page
"If you are explaining, you are losing." ... It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. Six years after this battle began, we're still explaining. We're still explaining and we are losing. They frame this as a massive battle to stop theft, to protect property. They don't get why rearchitecting the network destroys innovation and creativity. They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a form of theft. A theft of our common culture. We have failed in getting them to see what the issues here are and that's why we live in this place where a tradition speaks of freedom and their controls take it away."
Do you really want to join the bumper sticker culture and function on three seconds of information that you think you know? I wasn’t, and consequently this article changed my mind on an important issue.
I do. As CS student who has been a hobbyist for ~7-7.5 years (I started monkeying around with original C) I do not support modern copyright law. I do not believe that you as a copyright holder, or I as a future copyright holder, have any right whatsoever to protect creative works at the expense of the rights of the public.
People have a right to use their property as they see fit. You do not have a right to determine how they use it, nor do you have a right to set a standard for how they will use it prior to selling it to them. Why? Because to enforce your views you have to call upon the almighty power of the state. You already use the state to artificially limit access to your goods beyond the mechanisms provided by the market. Ergo, you have no right whatsoever to determine how people will use your goods outside of the paremeters set forth by the law.
When you sell a copyrighted good, you have no right to call it a "license" unless you are selling someone the right to use your good in a way that would otherwise be illegal under copyright law. You sell a CD with software on it, Food Lion sells blocks of cheese. There should be no legal distinction between the two. Once you sell the CD, in a free society you would fully relinquish control over the right to determine the lawful usage of the CD. But as previously stated, the United States is anything but a free society in many areas. When it comes to IP law, the US is a banana republic that would bring shame to our founding generation.
I have frequently broke then encryption on DVDs to use them as I see fit because I didn't have a good DVD player, but I could play VCDs well. Technically I committed multiple serious violations of the DMCA. But you know who the real criminals are? The hacks in the IP industry who bribe members of Congress and the members of Congress themselves that get our votes and sell themselves like cheap whores to the highest bidder. I for one think that the best remedy for this problem is to round up all lobbyists, especially IP lobbyists, the heads of the organizations that represent them and establish a gulag in Alaska just for them. Then repeal these laws and get them inline with the US Constitution....
-----------------------
As far as I'm concerned, that's where it should have stayed.
----------------------
Particularly for technical works, this is an unreasonable copyright period, and will extend long beyond the time when the work has any value at all except to historians.
------------------------------------
Jenkins and White, writen in 1956, is still one of the best texts on classical optics to be found. I was happy to buy it recently. Wheeler on scientific glassblowing is the best text ever written on the subject. I lost my copy I would be thrilled to buy a copy at the original $89.00 if I it were still in print. If Wheeler's family makes ten dollars off it, I don't care.
Silly me -- I thought that one of the differences between conseratives and liberals was ability to trace economic causes and effects.
-------------------------------
Silly you. The problem is that instrument glassblowing and instrument maching and design is done by relatively few people in the United States who have advanced training and capabilities. A reprinting would not sell enough copies to pay its way. Used copies of the book run up to $500.00 when you can find them. Even that price wouldn't pay for a publisher's reprnt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.