Free Code, Free Culture

ryants writes: "The transcript of an interesting panel discussion with Larry Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, John Barlow and others about digital freedoms is available here over at Dr Dobb's TechNetCast."

Yes, This Was Something Not to be Critical Of

[The Critisizer]

It stimulated my mind to a deep degree. My loins were also in on the action. The honesty was also brutal, but honest. A very good read for all. Maybe.

The trouble with this debate...

[dido]

Is that it's somewhat one-sided. We all know Tim O'Reilly, Larry Lessig, John Perry Barlow, Dan Gillmore, and Clay Shirky all believe in more or less the same thing: that information is not a product or property to be traded and sold, but a service to be provided, and that is the crux of this whole question. Now, if they had gotten one of the people whom Eben Moglen calls 'econodwarfs' or 'IPdroids' in his seminal essay: Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright [columbia.edu] the debate might have been much more interesting. Maybe if they got Jack Valenti or those other partisans of strong "intellectual property" rights to participate...

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fp

It's all about change

[Cerlyn]

This debate was handled very well; I encourage everyone to actually listen to it or read the transcript. The panelists realize that we are living in the middle of a transition from one type of society to another.

Concepts from artist's rights to software piracy to how the Internet should be run in the future are covered in this discussion in a very civil manner, with intelligent responses all-around. It makes for very intresting reading.

Cool discussion

[evanbd]

I thought it was really interesting. You actually get the sense these people care about the debate for the sake of the debate producing the right answer, which may or may not be their own. They clearly have very strong opinions, more or less in line with the slashdot readership and against the mpaa/riaa, but they seem to honestly want the debate to happen.

In an age of no discussion and just yelling at each other and lawsuits, it was a very refreshing read. No doub this was increased by my general agreement with the panel...

Re:It's all about change

[Rick the Red]

discussion in a very civil manner, with intelligent responses all-around.

"civil"? "intelligent"? How is this "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters?"