Lawrence Lessig; over the top?

[kevin_delson]

<p>Has anyone else seen this?</p>

<p>I'm not seeking to start a war over CC vs Hard Copyright, but this concerned me.<br>

I've read many of the pro's & con's of (CC), personally I'm against it for a number of reasons;<br>

but this guy at the end compares our current (yes, somewhat flawed system) to the cold war days?<br>

You gotta' be kidding me!</p>

<p>Here's the <a href="http://asmp.org/content/registration-counts">LINK</a>, select "tape 3" to view.<br>

It's about 30 mins in length; professor Lessig begins around 2min 10 secs into it.</p>

<p> </p>

[geoffs1]

<p>Of course, the interesting irony (IMHO) is that the power of all the "alternative" licensing schemes relies on the control given by basic copyright law.</p>

<p>OTOH, some of the recent modifications (ex. perennial extensions of protection coincident with the imminent lapse of Mikey Mouse's copyright) are perhaps a bit much.</p>

<p>With that said, I agree Lessig (and Richard Stallman) are usually a bit strident and "over the top", but they are useful as markers on one end of the spectrum.</p>

[craigd]

<p>That's not so much an irony as a matter of using available tools to approximate the desired ends. One can do this while simultaneously advocating change intended to better achieve the desired ends and eliminate the ways the current system is being abused. It's neither hypocritical nor ironic.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>I got as far as the introduction of the photographer as a "strategic visionary," and they lost me. I think that was about seven seconds in.</p>

<p>Don't worry too much about this problem. Chase Jarvis has a segment two tapes later. That introduction lost my interest after Chase Jarvis was credited with "redefining" popular culture's relationship to photography through his work.</p>

<p>I didn't agree with the opening tone set by the introductions. Why didn't they open with, "He made this photo," and show one?</p>

<p>The Creative Commons licenses are just four more contracts for lawyers to sue somebody over. Business communities are so irresponsible from Wall Street on out that getting them to be reasonably personally accountable for anything would be like trying to sue a sandstorm. If they're going to steal it to begin with, they have no problem with infringing upon its commercial value afterward. </p>

[kevin_delson]

<p>I guess I should label myself as a conservative in more areas than just the way I live my life.<br>

I have no real problem with the current protections offered by the system; I would like to see MORE protection. CC IMHO seems to make it almost impossible to track a © after who knows how many iterations it's gone thru.</p>

<p>My real concerns are two-fold.</p>

<p>1) When something is (pushed) hard enough, something will give.<br>

2) I was somewhat surprised the ASMP allowed this guy to advance his (theory) given the current © law of 1976, as the ASMP is strongly in favor of a) Registration and b) Complete control of the artists work.</p>

<p> </p>

[mark_e3]

<p>Good news Kevin, once ACTA is passed we'll start jailing children who share songs and steal photographs.</p>

<p>http://www.laquadrature.net/en/leak-eu-pushes-for-criminalizing-non-commercial-usages-in-acta</p>

[geoffs1]

<blockquote>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=6106234">Craig Dickson</a> , Jun 28, 2010; 10:43 a.m. That's not so much an irony as a matter of using available tools to approximate the desired ends.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Quite correct. "Ironic" was a poor choice. What I meant to say was more like:<br>

It's interesting that Lessig, et al. are pragmatic enough to use the protections afforded the artist under the current copyright system to implement their proposed system. In my experience it's unusual to see people with such a strident view to be willing to "work within the system" like they are.</p>

<p>FWIW, I think the CC is a great idea (and I have used it on occasion). It essentially provides a framework of ready-made licensing schemes (and associated boilerplate terms) that content-creators can pick and choose from with reasonable expectation that their intended restrictions will be understood (and hopefully enforceable). I would not like to see any one of them become the default (I'm not a big fan of the 1976 copyright act, but it's not terrible).</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>I confess, even John O'Keefe-Odum had more patience than I did......</p>

 

[jpo3136b]

<p>Interestingly, yesterday afternoon I was strolling through the bookstore and noticed that Lessig had written a book some time back called "Code." I didn't get it. There was also a book by Jeremy Rifkin called "The Age of Access," about the difference between attitudes about property ownership. </p>

<p>One of Rifkin's ideas was that as people, particularly the next generation, started growing up and living in environments where sharing was easier, that it would change our attitudes about private property. </p>

<p>If we think about the idea from Locke that the ability to hold private property is a natural right, then we can see just how much of a societal change digital sharing is. Digital sharing is almost an abolition of that right. Not a blanket, categorical loss of that right, but something's there.</p>

<p>Now, in and of itself, sharing a file or two may be no big deal; but Rifkin's book ads got me to thinking because he suggested that in the future we will see more and more of our lives marketed. The book was almost ten years old or more, kind of interesting as a prediction because of its age, but some of the ideas looked like they were being played out. </p>

<p>Like, he was pitching the idea of hypercommercialism. This was that everything besides our immediate family relationships would be commercialized. Another interesting point in there was that corporations would gravitate to charging for access to digital properties because actually having real estate, instead of "virtual" estate, was seen as a huge liability. Any liability was an erosion of profit; so, to increase profit, reduce responsibility by getting rid of any tangible assets. </p>

<p>There was a section in there that looked like community sharing; which, to me was similar to many social networking sites. That is, those networks and bulletin boards which existed solely to group people and advertise to them or about them. Much like Facebook. </p>

<p>Well, so I think I am more conservative on this issue of what is private property. I think we should be able to share some voluntarily, just as if I could show you a picture in person if I brought a small print with me. Yet, there is something insidious about excessive sharing, I think. Particularly when we are living through a depression caused by companies which behaved with such excessive exploitative practices motivated by extreme personal selfishness. There is something psychopathic in the behavior of companies which claim to be corporate, just like people, but who are so irresponsible as to have no admission of their own existence enough to be responsible and accountable for basic matters. </p>

<p>Some years ago, people were saying that open source computing was the wave of the future. Well, it is. Yet, part of the reason why it is, I think, is not because of community, but because it is what's to the advantage of the extremely selfish. </p>

<p>There's still noblesse oblige out there, but there are still sharks swimming in the tank, too. </p>

<p>In my opinion, by the way, there is nothing wrong with copyright law as it exists. It never has offered much protection to begin with; all this change in labeling a document does is provide a predatory thief a lead on how much we're going to scream and yell if he takes our stuff. That's to his advantage, not ours.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>Our best copyright defense would be something like swooping down out of left field after the person who stole the image used it in an internationally televised ad campaign. Then, bill him and collect that bill in some kind of compulsory manner that caused the bankruptcy, liquidation and dissolution of a major corporation.</p>

<p>This would be followed by a kicking and screaming period where big companies paid off politicians to pass laws that gave them royal favor. After a while, another takedown and backlash would occur. This pattern of to and fro regulation would establish what the people would regard as the middle ground. Once that's done, things would start riding along there.</p>

<p>Only when big companies start screwing up so badly that they have to pay out heavy damages not to collectives like a writer's guild, but to individual people will the wealthy be so shocked as to start paying attention.</p>

<p>Can you imagine how bad it would be for people hobnobbing at some cocktail party to realize that all of the wealth of a major corporation, say a billion plus dollars, had to be liquidated and handed over to some housewife from Indianapolis because they stole her flower photo?</p>

<p>If taking people's artwork was an actual gamble which had consequences for mistakes, like real adult life, then I think people would be a little more careful because they would naturally not want to pay.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>As it is, I think that it's not that we're in the age of the incorporated. These monster companies that are gambling on nothing but fantasies (from Bear Stearns to Goldman Sachs to whomever is in trouble from lying and gambling on derivatives right now) aren't <em>in corpore</em>, they are not as though they are in one body. They are a-corpore. Acorporate. It's as though they have a body, but they do not have the responsibility of a body.</p>

<p>They are the business undead. Zombies. Ancorporations. Zombie companies. The acorporate.</p>

<p>Until some artist can take down a zombie corporation, or do it some real damage, none of those people will care or do anything to change or in any way stop being like zombies and start acting more like people.</p>

<p>Zombie corporations. The plague of the 21st Century.</p>

[kevin_delson]

<blockquote>

<p>Like, he was pitching the idea of hypercommercialism.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>More like "Hyper-Socialism"..and we all see how well that has worked in history.</p>

<p>I read all your responses John.</p>

<p>Real? Yes.<br>

Insidious? Even moreso.</p>

[geoffs1]

<p>In the age of the DMCA, the 1976 Copyright Act, and the series of extensions to the length of copyright protection that have been granted regularly since 1976 (ex. the 1998 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act">"Mickey Mouse Forever"</a> act), it may be interesting and illustrative to look back at the attitudes toward intellectual-property that existed at the time when the US Constitution was being drafted (I choose this not out of any Ameri-centrism, but rather because the drafters of the Constitution were carefully examining the then "state of the art" in social/political systems and trying to extract those aspects they thought were most beneficial).</p>

<p>First, the wording in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8):</p>

<blockquote>

<p>To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790">first federal copyright law</a> limited the term of protection to 14 years, with an additional 14 year renewal if the original author was still alive.</p>

<p>In fact, Thomas Jefferson has famously expressed his opinion on the subject that reads much like Lessig, Stallman, et al.:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. <strong>That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature</strong>, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.</p>

</blockquote>