1. 08 February 2006

    Free Culture

    Lawrence Lessig

    940 days ago

    A real interesting book. Lessig is crusading against those who look to impede our development as a society (the book is quite US centric) by locking up all almost everything produced within our culture in the past 80 years by means of outrageous and unconstitutional copyright law.

    Lessig has a lot of resentment towards the American legal system, and rightly so. On many occasions he deprecates it. He’s not happy about the current state of congress either, openly indicting it of rampant corruption and being disconnected from american society.

    He systematically shows how completely wrongheaded the laws governing copyright have become in america. Works that should have lapsed into the public domain thirty years ago are still protected because those holding the rights to those work mercilessly lobby and provide large sums of dollars to congressmen and women.

    He proposes a solution to the problem in the epilogue, but for the most part the entire book is used to further his (entirely righteous) tirade against what copyright has become. It’s hurting our creativity. We’ve reached a turning point in culture at which we can either cut copyright law back to a much more reasonable set of statutes or live in a society in which creative expression is forbidden to draw upon any previous form of expression.

    I’ve pirated music for quite awhile, and don’t see myself stopping any time soon. I make the kind gesture of buying a CD when I really love it, but every time the RIAA decides to sue another kid, I’m less likely to fiscally support them.

    So like most every other part of our government now, copyright policy has degenerated into a corporate driven engine to assure big media a windfall share in profits. Never before in any free society has the right to expression been so severely limited.

    So Lessig has a radical argument. He points out that this is one of the biggest deals of our time. A few years ago he argued his case, that the Sonny Bono act was blatantly unconstitutional, before the supreme court. he failed, and feels it was his fault.

    He brings up the fact that under the current law, 43% of americans are felons. And this was in 2002, I can’t imagine it’s having shrank. Something is clearly wrong when not only does the current law flout the constitution, which calls for a limited term of copyright, but it entirely flouts common sense.

    The internet is big and scary to entrenched interests, for all the good it does for the average person, it sure fucks up their business model. And we can’t let that happen now, can we?

  2. 06 December 2005

    1004 days ago

    Intellectual Prosperity

    The consequence of treating ideas and thoughts as if they are tangible property are the very destruction of science and education and the elimination of individual rights and freedoms.

    Kjell Olsen1004 days ago

  3. 26 September 2005

    1075 days ago

    You Are the MPAA: A Broadcast Flag Update

    The Brodacast flag: in 10 words, it is a standard pushed by big media that would render tv (and even radio) completely incomprehensible to devices without the proper liscense.

    It was thrown out of court earlier this year, but the RIAA and MPAA are still want to ensure their stranglehold on the commons.

    Mostly, the broadcast flag would make it a real bitch to record television/movies to anything. Surely no more making your own MythTV box.

    This goes against the old Sony vs. Betamax case, in which Sony asserted that Betamax shouldn’t be allowed to sell VCR machines, because that could possibly allow copyrights held by Sony on video products to be infringed upon. Sony lost, and people have enjoyed the convenience of VCR’s ever since.

    via Kjell Olsen1075 days ago

  4. 22 September 2005

    1079 days ago

    Google Sued

    Google wants to do nothing more to 20,000,000 books than it does to the Internet: it wants to index them, and it offers anyone in the index the right to opt out. If it is illegal to do that with 20,000,000 books, then why is it legal to do it with the Internet? The

    via Kjell Olsen1079 days ago

  5. 07 July 2005

    1156 days ago

    Wired 13.07: God's Little Toys

    “Who owns the words?” asked a disembodied but very persistent voice throughout much of Burroughs’ work. Who does own them now? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us.

    via Kjell Olsen1156 days ago

  6. Also somewhat recently

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