Lessig On IP Protection, Conflict 217
cdlu writes "According to NewsForge [part of OSDN, like Slashdot], Stanford University law professor, author, and Creative Commons chairman Lawrence Lessig sharpened the definition of the ongoing legal struggle over intellectual property while talking at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday. According to Lessig: 'Contrary to what many people see as a cultural war between conservative business types and liberal independents, this is not a 'commerce versus anything' conflict. It's about powerful (business) interests and if they can stop new innovators'."
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:4, Informative)
This is how copyright currently works (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm, this is how Copyright currently works. I create my work (establish the expression of an idea in a fixed medium; original content), send a copy along with $20 to the Library of Congress (the qualified third party), then I show others the work in a gallery, on the radio, in a theatre, or wherever (shared to the public) and the public can come and view, listen to, or whatever as long as they don't infringe upon my five basic rights to distribution, derivatives, public performance, public display, and copying (work protected as a whole as to its ownership).
Re:Short term vision, short term interest (Score:3, Informative)
In first world countries we feel safe and classes live together with minimal bloodshed. In third world countries the rich are safe, the poor do what they can to eat, and the middle class, under attack from both directions, bunker down with whatever stuff they can acquire.
No it isn't... (Score:5, Informative)
send a copy along with $20 to the Library of Congress (the qualified third party)
There is no need to send your copy to the Library of Congress to receive copyright protection. You only need to send your copy if you want to sue someone for infringement, and you want to collect monetary damages. Oh, and you don't need to send the whole thing, just part of it will be fine.
Welcome to 2004 - where have you been for the last 20 years?
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:3, Informative)
Or vice versa. The only sticking point at all is that both involved parties recognize the other as part of China, and themselves as the only legitimate Chinese government.
KFG
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:3, Informative)
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:5, Informative)
"When I saw him speak, he pointed out that copyright was set up to encourage writers (and at first it was ONLY writers) to continuously work and release stuff out into the creative commons, where in a limited period of time (conservatively, more list 7 years instead of the lifetime of the artist) it would be released out to open for everyone to use freely."
To amplify the above, this happened in 1790, and books, maps and charts were the universe of items that could be copyrighted. The term was 14 years with the priveledge of renewing for another 14 years.
It wasn't until 1831 that musical works were added, to protect against unauthorized printing and selling of sheet music. The term was increased to 28 years at the same time.
Plays were added in 1856 and photos were added in 1865.
The complete history is here [copyright.gov].
crud (Score:4, Informative)
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:3, Informative)
Lawrence Lessig is working to craft systems that increase the control that a creator has over his work, which today means working to reduce the opportunities that companies have to take that contropl away and giving creators the legal tools neccissary for them to colaborate and share without giving away all of their rights to their original work.
Eliminating licensing, copyright, and patents would benefit only those companies large enough to control large marketing and distribution systems and allow for companies and individuals to take your work out without contributing back in the way you have chosen.
The idea that those who are against centralized government or corporate control of creative works are against any form of copyright or patent law is disinformation that is spread by the companies that currently benefit most by the flawed systems that are now in effect. This "revolution" cannot be won by removing those laws, but only by working to change those laws to reflect the original intent of limited time exclusive rights being granted to creators, the right of creators to license their work however they see fit, and enforcement of those rights so that those who make use of creators works (including use by driving other works) are required to obey the licensing agreements.
In other words, he is working to make the law "more Free".
Election latency (Score:3, Informative)
Congress could repeal the copyright laws tomorrow, if you could get enough votes to do so.
Actually, repealing huge chunks of Title 17, United States Code, would take two years and about 10 months, as that's how long it would take to cycle out a majority of representatives and senators in the Congress. Those who have held their offices since 1997 or before have showed by their unanimous consent to the Bono Act and the DMCA that many of them are so bought-and-paid-for that they won't listen to letters from those who care about the rights of users of works.
more Americans use peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush.
I'll vote based on my research of the issues from a broad spectrum of sources. However, too many people vote based mostly on what they see on news networks owned by the movie studios, who have an economic interest in stifling discussion about rolling back the scope and duration of copyright. In addition, both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party seem bought and paid for; not enough people have considered a third party to be able to get even four-tenths of the vote in any given House district.
ranging from speaking out
Such as handing out leaflets in support of a boycott of The Walt Disney Company [losingnemo.com]?
to practicing civil disobedience.
What about this civil disobedience [pineight.com]?
The mainstream media should pick up on this (Score:3, Informative)
Incase somebody's planning to publish it, I would like to (as I have done earlier) point to the RMS's essay: The Right to Read [gnu.org] cached on Google here [216.239.53.104] (incase gnu.org is down -- they're moving [slashdot.org] their machines to another location).
Some of you might have seen the essay earlier, but I think it deserves a much wider audience.
Re:Lessig the Grey vs. Creative Commons (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is, if you look at this [creativecommons.org], you see that the license includes a notice that fair use is still protected, and that the CC license with "no derivative" clause does so in order to facilitate copying and sharing. It is still closer to Lessig's position than current copyright law.
I do believe and agree that in this area, compromise like what Lessig may be endorsing with the CC license (and like copyright law itself has been doing for the last hundred years) might create confusion about what the 'principles' of copyright law are. This surely will make some of us uncomfortable -- especially those of us who believe that copyright is supposed to make some sort of moral/logical sense, and not merely be a pragmatic engine for creativity.
However, as we've already seen, copyright does not operate under any principles except to enable more creativity than it disables. Copyright is not a moral law. It does not have unimpeachable logic that directs its content. Thus, Lessig need not either be totally black or white, and does not contradict himself by agreeing to less than he wishes for in his blog--since copyright allows [sorry, I can't help it] "gray" principles.
Being informed: the dmca-discuss list (Score:5, Informative)
http://lists.anti-dmca.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca_d iscuss
To be informed of all patent, copyright and other related news, subscribe to this list. You can also throw your two cents in the ongoing discussion, or just enjoy the articles.
Re:Being informed: the dmca-discuss list (Score:2, Informative)
http://lists.anti-dmca.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca_d iscuss [anti-dmca.org]
OSBC talks + Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Informative)
1. He actually talked about developing nations, pointing out that although in theory these countries are given lesser constraints negotiated via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in reality the U.S. is apparently creating bi-lateral agreements with these countries to strong-arm them into falling in line with U.S. IP practices. To hear Lessig tell the tale, this may result in some backlash on the economic front, as some of the countries are banding together to try to stand up to Uncle Sam
2. Lessig said in the Q&A that he's tired of hearing his words played back to him with the implication that he's against patent and copyrights. His talk actually reinforced them as a good thing, IF properly applied, i.e. in a balanced way.
He pointed out that the retention of IP rights gives the creator the ability to provide clear guidelines about the acceptable use of the work. He countered that, though, by pointing out that in the 70's IP law changed so that everything was by DEFAULT protected, vs. works having to be explicitly registered. One of the
3. The argument for limiting the duration of copyright of course builds off the whole notion of 'balance.' There was an interesting point Lessig made about the goal of well-managed businesses... that they basically try hard to be boring, i.e. to avoid major disruptions. It was interesting because the ending keynote speaker of the day wasClayton Christensen (Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution) from Harvard Business School who had models that showed why this kind of business behavior ultimately leads to innovative startup's 'killing off' the big guys. Seemed to reinforce Lessig's point that the 'boring companies' need the crutch of artificial (& ridiculous, IMHO) constructs in the law to prop them up.
C'mon, you goliaths, what are you afraid of? Can't take a little honest competition without the help of your legal teams? Now that Michael Eisner's powerbase is weakening, maybe we'll see some movement on this front?....
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:3, Informative)
"Don't forget that, according to this online info the average human lifespan in 1790 was about 37 years. So a 14 year copyright with a right to renew for 14 years is 75% of the life span of a typical person at the time."
We are getting off-topic here, but "average" and "typical" have different meanings in this context. When somebody quotes that the average lifespan of a person in some forgotten century was under 40, they are referring to the arithmetic mean, and not stating that the typical person dropped dead before 40.
George Washington died in 1799 at 67 years of age. Thomas Jefferson lived to be 83. Were they extraordinarily long-lived in an era when the average lifespan was 37 years? No.
The reason why the average -- again, we mean arithmetic mean -- lifespan was so low back then was because people did not survive childhood diseases the way they did now. Your odds of dropping dead before you were 18 were vastly higher than they are now, but once you survived your teens, the odds were good that you'd live to well beyond 37.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:2, Informative)
There is a danger of making complacent assumptions in this as in many other things. A very quick bit of Googling to back up my hunch revealed some information about "Bollywood", the Indian film industry which, according to this source [go.com] (and a couple of others), has annual revenues heading towards $1B, and has a massively higher output than Hollywood. Consider the relative GDPs of India ($2.664 trillion) and the USA ($10.45 trillion -- according to the CIA), and it might not really be sensible to think of the USA being so comfortably in the lead in film production.
I know you said that many other countries are catching up with the US in technological innovation, but like the movie industry, it might be worth considering just how close some countries are coming.