Lessig – Code and the Future of Ideas

Code – Intellectual Property

• Optimal is mix between public and private spaces

• Many agents can use cyberspace - spiders, hackers, users

• Legitimacy depends on intention

• Focus on protections for copyright – gives holder certain exclusive rights that include the right to copy.

• Previous copying was expensive, prohibitive

• Digital technologies – perfect copies, freely and effectively distributed, consumers made “their content” widely available, little law could do to stop it, perfect storm to disrupt business model.

• Regulation was first line of defense

• DMCA Digital Millenium Copyright Act

• Code will replace law as primary defense; private fences vs. public law.

• Law must consider, is protection too great? How does it affect culture?

Code – Intellectual Property

• Choices• Propertized

• Anonymity

• Drive out Amateur culture

• The Commons• Public Domain

• Permission

• Offers copyright holders a simple way to mark their creative work with the freedom they intend it to carry.

The Future of Ideas

• Revolution of creativity

• Potential to be squelched by law

• Harm the environment of innovativeness

• Two choices – fancy TV or a time of great creativity and participation

• The question for us comes before: not whether the market or the state but, for any given resource, whether that resource should be controlled or free

• Free beer or free speech

• Free – can use without permission or permission is granted neutrally

• Free resources perceived as “inferior”. But is this so in an economy of abundance?

How I Lost the Big One

• Eldred vs. Ashcroft• Sonny Bono copyright extension• Argument – copyright should not be in perpetuity?• Felt that someone else may have argued

differently• Not a litigator• Honey, I shrunk the Constitution. “We had in our

Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment.”

How I Learned to Love Larry

• Lessig was the fiery populist arguing against the monied interests.

• In a contest of greed versus theft, I suppose I chose greed as the morally superior position.

• If the essence of copyright law is to allow creators to have control, he argued, then there are ways to maintain ownership of copyrighted works and still make it possible for the average person to license the use of those works.

• Ordinary uses of these extraordinary technologies are all presumptively illegal today.

• “This is the aim of Creative Commons - to help artists and authors give others the freedom to build upon their creativity, without calling a lawyer first. Copyrights protect important values. They are essential to creativity, even in a digital age. Yet the current version of copyright law was not written for a world of digital creativity. As applied to these technologies, it often restricts more than it inspires. Creators who use the CC licenses are saying: We have built upon the work of others. Let others build upon ours. Consistent with the law, we can enable this next great revolution.”