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Lessig on the World Social Forum 209

Posted by timothy from the everyone-wants-to-live-in-brazil dept.
Raindance writes "Lawrence Lessig has a great article up on Technology Review about the World Social Forum held this past January in Brazil. In addition to telling an engaging story, it covers topics ranging from GNU and DRM to Brazil's interesting stance on the rights of foreign copyright holders, and is a good introduction to the permission culture/remix culture debate. It also makes me want to live in Brazil."
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Lessig on the World Social Forum More

Lessig on the World Social Forum

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  • The plague is spreading (Score:5, Interesting)

    by menkhaura ( 103150 ) <espinafre@gmail.com> on Monday June 13, 2005 @12:22AM (#12800220) Homepage Journal
    Don't be fooled; the software patent folly, the monopoly of huge corporations is also present here, perhaps not as big as in the U.S. or Europe, but it's growing. In our case, the situation is a little worse: the monopoly holder is foreign! If the operating system in almost all computers in American homes was from some Brazilian monopoly, I bet you would think something is very wrong. But here, in Brazil, we live by copying others, adopting foreign technologies, and never developing our own. We don't even play catch-up, for two reasons primarily: first, Brazil is a poor country and public money is very badly managed; research and development are secondary goals to making rich people, politicians, richer. Second, so-called first world is so ahead in technology that not a few think that pursuing our own self-sufficience in tech (not only IT, but science in general) is futile. Of course, there are a few and honourable exceptions (Cesar Lattes is a very well known physicist), but in general this is how we fare.
    • I have heard this from friends who have spent several years in Brazil. Like many Latin American nations, you have wonderful people and great potential, but it's hindered by a tradition of corrupt politics. If you can ever solve that problem, you'll easily surpass the US and Europe.
    • Your space program seems to be putting forward the effort (barring that horrible explosion you had a while ago), and a number of countries (especially the ESA) have been working with you on it. If Brazil keeps it up and gets a small cheap/reliable orbital rocket, it should be a great source of pride not just for the nation, but for South America as a whole - you have a perfect launch location, too :)

  • Something intangible... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ankhcraft ( 811009 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @12:39AM (#12800281) Homepage
    I read the article. A very different socio-political environment indeed. And I think it sounds wonderful.

    I honestly like what I'm hearing from Brazil though. This sounds beautiful. We all know that free software is a good thing. I don't think there's anything wrong w/ someone retaining rights to their intellectual property. The right thing to do if you don't agree w/ how they want to license the rights to use their product, is to *not* buy it. But I *do* think there's something strange w/ someone trying to tell me how many times I can read the e-Book I've purchased, or listen to the MP3 I've downloaded, until I have to buy a new one. One could of course, liken this to renting a movie, but it's still a bit different.

    I think that what we're grasping at here all comes from the folly of trying to set up of a system of rules to govern the consumption of intangibles so that they can fit our existing econonmic model built largely around the consumption of tangibles.

    • Re:Something intangible... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pcgabe ( 712924 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @01:49AM (#12800493) Homepage Journal
      It might be more accurate to liken it to the DIVX rental system (not the coincidentally named unrelated codec).

      In the original DIVX system, you would buy DIVX-DVDs for, say $5. This would give you one 48-hour window to watch the movie, at some point in the future (of your choosing). Then, if you wished to watch it again, you purchase another window.

      After several (seven, IIRC) uses, the movie became permanently free, and you could unlock it whenever you wanted to watch it.

      Theoretically, it was akin to renting-to-buy the movie. You could pick it up for $5 and watch it once (a bit more than renting, but no late fees). If you wanted to 'rent' it again later, well, you already had the disc, you just needed to unlock it again. Again, similar to renting, except you do it from home, immediately. Eventually it's permanently unlocked, and if you liked it enough to unlock it so many times, you've purchased it.

      Perfectly logical idea.

      The best part of the analogy, though, is how DIVX ended.

      There was so little popular support for the idea (because people couldn't get over the idea of purchasing a physical disc without the right to watch it whenever they wanted), that the company eventually went bankrupt, and all the people that actually HAD purchased DIVX discs then had no way to unlock them. And of course the same sort of thing has happened to people with large iTunes collections that have had a hardware failure. Their legitimate purchase suddenly has no value.

      This is the real fear of Digital Restrictions Management. Despite assurances, if permission is required to use the product, it is by it's very nature, unreliable.

      Would you buy a car if you had to get permission each time you wanted to drive it? Maybe (if the car was cheap), but the first time you needed to be somewhere, and the guy who holds the keys for you cannot be found, you'll start looking for a new permission-free car.

      • Re:Something intangible... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @02:53AM (#12800675)
        See, that's what bothers me. When you buy DRMed content, you're leasing. Not buying. Why leasing? Because you loose control of what you can or can't do with your purchase, insidelegal boundaries.

        If i buy a book, i want to read it whenever i feel like. I buy music, i want to be able to listen it in my device of choice. Hell, i want to be able to sell it if i need it, or feel like doing so. Try that with iTunes.
        Remember the Steam issue with HL2? Another example. Why do i need to validate online my hard copy purchase of the game in order to play it? Why if Valve dissapears tomorrow and they never provide a way arround it? Suddenly your purchase is worthless; effectively locking you out.

        What blows my mind about this line of thinking, is not that companies try to push it, but consumers are gradually accepting it. DIVX failed before, but less restrictive types of DRM are working comercially. The only thought that comforts me is that, eventually, all forms of DRM are cracked in one way or another (CSS, anyone?), and the ones that are too restrictive fail commercialy. The USA has the DMCA, but the rest of the world is safe for now...
        • The USA has the DMCA, but the rest of the world is safe for now

          Perhaps you were unaware of the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), and the recent US-Australia Free Trade agreement? And the Free Trade Area of the Americas which is most likely to be imposed soon? And who-knows how many other international treaties imposing DMCA terms in god-knows how many countries?

          The Free Trade Area of the Americas even appeards to be a US effort to backport increasingly restrictve terms into the US, in terms of d

          • which is most likely to be imposed soon

            As much as Bush is trying and pushing for it, for now the FTAA isn't much more than a pipe dream. CAFTA, Central America Free Trade Agreement, has a better shot. There's Brazil and Venezuela Bush has to contend with. The WTO meetings in Cancun "fail apart" because Brazil wasn't about to bow down to Bush and Lula isn't about to start anytyme soon. Neither is Chavez. Instead they are work on Mercosur, a trading block of South American nations. Brazil's governme

      • Re:Something intangible... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mangu ( 126918 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @04:00AM (#12800877)
        Despite assurances, if permission is required to use the product, it is by it's very nature, unreliable.


        That's exactly my idea of why current copyright laws in the USA are unconstitutional. The US Constitution describes exactly why the concept of "intellectual" property is needed: to create an incentive for publishing. If you have DRM, the idea itself is not published, it's protected by a trade secret. The same is true for software that's sold in executable form only. Copyright should apply to the source code alone, not to the executable binary file.


        After the copyright expires, what does the public have? If it is a binary file, then no ideas enter the public domain, even after the ridiculously long copyright terms we have today. The same is true for an encoded DVD or anything with DRM in it.


        So let's keep each set of rules separate. Patents and copyrights are intended for ideas that will enter public domain after a certain time. Trade secrets are with you forever, until someone rediscovers that secret. If you want to keep your ideas secret, it's your right. But you shouldn't benefit from laws intended to assure that new ideas will enter the public domain if you do everything in your power to keep those ideas forever secret.


        Legislation such as the DMCA goes totally against the spirit embodied in the COnstitution.

      • It might be more accurate to liken it to the DIVX rental system (not the coincidentally named unrelated codec).

        Since when did 'coincidentally named' mean 'intentionally identically named'? It was called DivX ;-) for a reason... If you recall, divx 3.11 was a illegal hacked-up MS codec, and the name was a pun on the divx DRM system. Strangely enough, they've managed to build their own codec (4.0+) and a legal business model on top of that using the same name. Really shady way to build a corporate brand IMO

  • Larry Lessig (Score:5, Informative)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @12:51AM (#12800326)
    A few weeks ago Larry Lessig gave a great talk [wilcoworld.net] along with Jeff Tweedy at the New York Public Library. In it Lessig talks a lot about Brazil and how they are totally nuts about open source, and how it isn't only overweight nerds with ponytails who are into it (his words, not mine). Definitely worth watching, there is some great new material that wasn't in his book Free Culture or anywhere else that I know of.
    • Is that he reminds me of those in the 1850's who cried foul about the abuses of the plantation system, but refused to accept the need to get rid of slavery.

      Today, all the problems of copyrights are obvious and clear, and not just a misunderstanding, but the very belief in the "right to controll what other people copy" being brought to its logical conclusion. Lessig, for all his ability to point out the abuses and wrongs of the system, seems completely uncapable of accepting the copyright controlls simply

  • Moving to Brazil (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pcgabe ( 712924 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @01:21AM (#12800430) Homepage Journal
    From http://alifelessordinary.com/ [alifelessordinary.com]
    Brazil is fast becoming the coolest country in the world.

    You know how the United States government is offering AIDS relief money to countries who desperately need it? Well, it comes with a caveat. Basically, any country trying to get U.S. AIDS relief dollars is required to teach =only abstinence=. This is exactly the sort of all or nothing approach that will (and likely is) making the world AIDS situation even worse. But Brazil basically told Bush to blow it out his ass and turned down our money.

    Now Brazil is ruffling the feathers of Bill Gates by wiring its shantytowns using recycled hardware and open-source software. A terrified Gates has tried, unsuccessfully, to schedule a meeting with Brazil's president, who =turned him down=.

    Brazil may not be the richest, most bestest country in the world, but I like their style.

    • Re:Moving to Brazil (Score:5, Funny)

      by adrianmonk ( 890071 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @03:21AM (#12800763)
      Now Brazil is ruffling the feathers of Bill Gates by wiring its shantytowns using recycled hardware and open-source software. A terrified Gates has tried, unsuccessfully, to schedule a meeting with Brazil's president, who =turned him down=.

      An even more fun idea would've been to go ahead and invite him down, then stand him up. Leave him waiting at the fucking Rio de Janeiro International Airport or whatever the hell it's called. Don't send a car, don't send someone to meet him, don't send anybody. Just leave him sitting there, waiting and waiting. Make him wait until he just gives up and has to punt and take the next flight out. But, of course, make sure that flight isn't until the next morning (even if he has his own private jet, etc.) and then do your best to make sure he can't get a hotel room either and has to sleep in the airport.

      I know, this kind of behavior is probably considered slightly impolite in international diplomacy circles. But, I can have my fantasy, can't I?

      • Leave him waiting at the fucking Rio de Janeiro International Airport or whatever the hell it's called. Don't send a car, don't send someone to meet him, don't send anybody.

        No DO send Michael Moore, or his equivalent. :-)

      • No, even better... have the meeting.

        With plenty of reporters present.

        Then proceed to explain exactly why the government finds Open Source to be better than Microsoft's current offerings. I recall one particularly excellent letter on the subject from a Brazilian polititian a few months ago. I don't have a link handy, but I'm pretty sure Slashdot ran a story on it and directly linked to it.

        -

    • I dunno. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by /dev/trash ( 182850 )
      You can't argue with the numbers when it comes to abstaining.

      • I don't see why this is so hard to understand. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NDPTAL85 ( 260093 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @08:45AM (#12802083)
        Actually yes you can. The numbers are a central point to abstaining since so very few people are capable of living their lives without sex. Keeping in mind that many people who claim to be chaste are simply lying, the small number of people who manage to make it to marriage without any sexual encounters are not just ineffectual they're also not normal.

        So why advocate a type of behavior that most people cannot adhere to considering the stakes which are disease? Its much more logical to give people who are sexually active the information and tools they need to protect themselves then to expect them to live up to some ridiculous conflicted fundamentalist standard of sexuality.
      • You can't argue with the numbers when it comes to abstaining.

        I agree.

        Abstinance programs result in equal or increased levels of teen pregnancy.

        Abstinance programs result in equal or increased levels of sexually transmitted diseased, including AIDS.

        And perhaps most comically, abstiniance programs result in substantially higher rates of oral and anal sex.

        If you want anal and oral sex, the best thing you can do is cruise these sorts of groups and events, maybe pick up someone wearing a Silver Ring Thing [silverringthing.com]

      • Two problems here. "Just say no", or in this case abstinence, doesn't work very well. And two, sex isn't the only way AIDS is contracted.

        Falcon

        There are three types of lies, lies, damn lies, and statistics.
    • Well, cool as in "looking after your own interests" and becoming less poverty-stricken.

      As for Lula turning his back on Bill: Well, that's what happens when you stop producing and start consuming. In MS' case they consume ideas and trends and repackage them into a costly mechanism designed to appropriate your monetary and political capital.

      We in the US need to start asking ourselves just what do we produce that the rest of the world REALLY needs? We are now even a net consumer of farm products. So what do
    • Basically, any country trying to get U.S. AIDS relief dollars is required to teach =only abstinence=.

      The policy you are refering to is called the "ABC" (Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom) condition, and only requires that the education/prevention money provided by the US be split equally between teaching abstinance, monogamy and condoms. And the US is most definately not demanding that safe-sex programs funded my other means be halted in order to recieve US funding as that quote suggests.

      At worst, som

  • Pass it around! (Score:4, Informative)

    by GrouchoMarx ( 153170 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @01:29AM (#12800444) Homepage
    If you agree with what Lessig says in this article (and it's about as uncontrovercial yet insightful as you can get, typical of Lessig), then the best way to honor it is to pass it along to family and friends (and maybe politicians) to read. I've been a fan of Lessig's for a while, and this is an excellent short summary of the issues involved, not from a technical level or an RMS-hippie-fist-raised standpoint, but from a very clear, calm, easily-approachable angle.

    It's not about software. It's about culture. It's about the fabric of our lives (and I don't mean cotton).

    And if the US is not careful, it will be about our marginalization as a country of any importance in the information sector. We'll have made it illegal for Americans to create or have culture. That's very sad, particularly as I am an American.

    Spread the word. Then go read Lessig's book "Free Culture" (dead-tree or free electronic format). Excellent read.

    • Re:Pass it around! (Score:4, Informative)

      by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @02:11AM (#12800573)
      It'll make culture illegal for any of the signatories of the Berne convention, which I guess is most of the first world nations. Transnationals will make sure that there's always copyright "harmonization" between nations, as has been reported in Slashdot recently. It's not even just american companies...plenty of european companies contribute to this nonsense.

    • Re:Pass it around! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by debrain ( 29228 )
      It's not about software. It's about culture. It's about the fabric of our lives (and I don't mean cotton).

      Ironically, the multi-billion dollar cotton subsidies to US farmers is one of the biggest hitches in completing the Doha development round [wikipedia.org] of the WTO.

      For the cost of these subsidies, America could pay the farmers a golden parachute of twice what it costs for them to work, and buy it from the 3rd world at a tenth of the price. Everyone benefits. Except the American farmer's lobbists.

      (Note, this isn't

      • Re:Pass it around! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MikeBabcock ( 65886 )
        This is a common mistake -- although you *could* outsource to some other country for your cotton, the result would be to make that country spontaneously richer than it had been, resulting in massive inflation and then wage hikes and then a loss of savings on the purchase of said goods from said country.

        Countries the size of the US *can* have this much of an effect on a foreign country that is significantly smaller. China is notable here -- although *huge* even compared to the USA, China's economy has grow

        • In a completely chaotic free market 3rd world country, try to picture the effect of suddenly putting *that* much demand out on the market for product.

          Then phase it in? When is sudden change ever a good idea in an economic system (other than as desperation efforts to stem the tide of other suddent changes)?

          But as you point out, lobbyists would wreak Limbough-proportioned havoc over any type of plans making changes to the status quo. I can see the Lou Dobbs new segment title now: "Unfleecing of th

    • What, exactly, is so unapproachable or unclear about RMS' talks and essays?
    • And if you can't get your friends to read all nine pages, the 9th [technologyreview.com] is particularly worthwhile. Talk about a stunning portrait of democracy.

      • And if you can't get your friends to read all nine pages, the 9th [technologyreview.com] is particularly worthwhile. Talk about a stunning portrait of democracy.

        Yea I read all four articles a few days ago.

        Falcon

  • Filled with non-sequiturs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @01:43AM (#12800476)
    This article is filled with non-sequiturs and confusion:

    1) so a guy took a bunch of his home movies, mixed them on an iMac and ended up winning an award at the Cannes film festival. Lessig asks "what if he wanted to mix someone else's video with his own? He couldn't". That totally didn't make any sense. You just proved that you don't need to be able to use other people's material freely to get into Cannes. Next time pick an example that had something to do with your point.

    2) Proprietary software makes Brazilians software pirates. Yeah, and murder laws make killers criminals. What? If you really want to follow through on this line of reasoning, you have to assume that there are not any suitable alternatives to most proprietary software. He seems to be in Brazil in part to trying to convince people that there are.

    3) constant mixing up of two definitions of free in the same context. Brazilian govt. are spending 1bil a year on proprietary software. Free software could solve this. Which free? You can charge for GPL software ya know. Look at the Sveasoft Linksys router firmware. You can use the GPL in software and still make sure you make lots and lots of money off people, if your product is good.

    That said, go Brazil.
    • 1) so a guy took a bunch of his home movies, mixed them on an iMac and ended up winning an award at the Cannes film festival. Lessig asks "what if he wanted to mix someone else's video with his own? He couldn't". That totally didn't make any sense. You just proved that you don't need to be able to use other people's material freely to get into Cannes. Next time pick an example that had something to do with your point.

      I think the point he was trying to make is that if content were "free" to begin with, o

      • Re:Filled with non-sequiturs (Score:5, Interesting)

        by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @02:43AM (#12800657)
        I agree with you and Lessig on remixing. "remixing" has been the constant through history, the fact that it's frowned upon today is the aberration. Classical composers "ripped off" each other all the time, and apparently it was popular with Shakespearean era playwrights and singers as well. Look at Jazz--I can't describe the type of liberation I felt when I realized that it was OK and good that people mess around with each others' stuff. TV fan fiction, it's usually better than the TV show, which is a win for culture in some small way.

        I fucking love the Japanese concept of Doujinshi, where someone else can just make their own comic stories using someone elses characters. Premise is that no one buying the doujinshi instead of the real thing, which is demonstrably true. Japanese society hasn't collapsed, someone should take note of that.

        • Classical composers "ripped off" each other all the time

          'All the time'? Hardly. In fact, it's extremely rare. I can think of very few cases of plagiarism, and most fall into one (or more) of the following categories:

          • Taken from the composer's own work. (Handel was a notorious self-plagiarist, for example; a good few of the themes in Messiah were based on his earlier work.) No question of 'ripping off' here; a composer can use their previous material in any way they like.
          • Shot Snippets: a few ba
          • Of course, it depends what you mean by 'ripping off'

            The poster was directly comparing with what is (and is not) permissable today. I would guess the obvious meaning would be "copyright infringment" as it is applied today.

            By that standard everything except your first example (reusing your own work) would qualify as infringment and "ripping off". Which was exactly his point. As he said:

            "remixing" has been the constant through history, the fact that it's frowned upon today is the aberration.

            -

    • 1) It is a form of art. You can arguee that it is not all that usefull (and you'd be wrong), but it is art. Anyway, it no big deal.

      2) Many people don't have enogh money to spend on sotware on Brazil. They can be pirates or use FOSS. Your analogy is right, but people are not forced to murder (and when thay are - legitimatee defense - the law don't declare them criminals).

      3) Right parties want free (beer) software, but left people often know that it is not enoght, they want brazilans to develop and customiz

      • 2) Many people don't have enogh money to spend on sotware on Brazil. They can be pirates or use FOSS. Your analogy is right, but people are not forced to murder (and when thay are - legitimatee defense - the law don't declare them criminals).

        Ah but some places are classifying those who defend themselves as criminals:

        Self-Defense vs. Municipal Gun Bans [reason.com]

        When Hale DeMar shot an intruder in his house, he may well have saved his children's lives. So why was he charged with a crime?

        The article goe

  • "The Waste Land" as precedent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tgma ( 584406 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @02:23AM (#12800609)
    "The Waste Land" , by T.S. Eliot, published in 1923, IIRC, is one of the most prominent early examples of the "remix culture". At least a third of Eliot's text consists of quotes from other writers, including reviews on Wagner, popular songs, reformation playwrights, and translations of Eastern mystics. In today's terms, it would be a massive copyright violation, on the lines of the quote from the Rolling Stones that cost the Verve so much of their royalties from "Bittersweet Symphony".

    My point is that there is a "high culture" version of this "remix culture" that has existed for a long time (classical musicians would often quote from each other). Perhaps acknowledgement of this might encourage legislators to accept that protection of the rights of older artists stifles the creativity of new ones. (This relates to the patent debate in a thread further down the front page).

    Actually, the bottom line is that it is going to happen, one way or the other. Individuals may suffer from this, like the Verve, who lost the revenues from a hit album, but others will gain, like kids in poorer countries, who are not viable targets for US trial lawyers.

  • Response by Professor of Law (Score:4, Informative)

    by g4LastingNFree ( 891661 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @02:43AM (#12800655)
    There is a response to this article by a Professor of Law from the University of Chicago (who holds a more moderate view about this -but nevertheless agrees to some of Lessigs view) here [technologyreview.com]
  • Few photos of Lessig [mnm.uib.es] (2 [mnm.uib.es]) and J. P. Barlow [mnm.uib.es] --mentioned in the article-- in Porto Alegre.

  • Missing a big point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by foonf ( 447461 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @03:57AM (#12800862) Homepage
    Having waded through all 9 pages of the article I agree that it was quite fine, like most of what Lessig writes.

    I think there is something going on, which he barely hints at, that will come to be important. The World Social Forum is not an event mainly focused around copyright law or free software. It is an event organized for a myriad of global popular movements of a generally leftist character -- for economic justice, environmental preservation, indigenous rights, gender and racial equality, and so on. It is one of the focal points of what is sometimes called (I would say erroneously) the "anti-globalization" movement.

    What we are seeing here is a convergence between those movements and free software. From the standpoint of leftists, it is quite natural: If you are interested in alternative forms of social organization (to unrestricted free-market capitalism) both the way open-source communities function and the nature of the software itself as a public resource are a prime example of how such an organization could work.

    On the other hand I imagine parts of the open-source community would be very wary of the association: After all, many community leaders go to great lengths to be as apolitical as possible, or even are outspoken conservatives or libertarians, and have spent years trying to persuade major corporations that supporting open-source does not mean destroying capitalism. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

    • What we are seeing here is a convergence between those movements and free software. From the standpoint of leftists, it is quite natural: If you are interested in alternative forms of social organization (to unrestricted free-market capitalism)

      Except for the fact that IP laws wouldn't exist in an unrestricted free-market captialist system. Patents are monopolies which are anathema to the free market. Copyrights that last "forever less a day" are no better. Would US Airlines and Australian Insurance comp

      • We don't have corporate socialism. What we have is as much of a free market that a society can bear, the rest is made up with limited socialist programs. You can't allow an airline to go down in flames. Too many people work at one. The effect on the economy would be politically unacceptable.
        • No you can allow an airline to go down in flames when it has become unprofitable. The problem was to many airlines (supply) and not enough passengers (demand). The solution to that problem is for some companies to go out of business or for them to all cut back services (and jobs). Using taxpayer money to keep unprofitable business around only fixes the problem long enough for the next election. And puts zero onus on the incompetent management of those companies to shape up.
      • All property laws create a monopoly on the use of a resource. Do you really believe that state property laws are anathema to the free market?

    • It is not that free software ideology is converging with leftist* one, the point is that free software is gaining attention on the political debate (left and right). Free software have a very nice ideology and create some very interesting possibilities for Brazil, it is easy to understand why it has such attention.

      *Brazilian leftist, that is diferent from US leftist for example.

  • its also a debate over open source (Score:3, Informative)

    by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Monday June 13, 2005 @07:25AM (#12801465) Journal
    when I submitted this story back on the 6th, it was rejected. You should read Lessig but note that in the same issue of TR, there is a rebuttal of sorts [technologyreview.com] to Mr. Lessig's interpretation authored by Richard Epstein.
  • After readin the story, I have to say that I am very encouraged. I for one could not point to a US politician like Gilberto Gil (the Brazilian Minister of Culture) if my life depended on it. I have lost hope that any real improvment of personal freedoms can begin in the US anymore (we're more likely to lose some in the current climate). I must say, however, that the stranglehold the US has on commerce (yes I know, them's fight'n words) will end up being a blessing in disguise as countries like Brazil mov

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