Monday 7 July 2008
Sunday 17 February 2008
Draft Lessig
☀Wednesday 6 February 2008
Or think about the swiftboating of John Kerry, by taking his strongest character — the fact that he alone of all the candidates had voluntarily gone to war to defend the interest of his country — an unpopular war, while the President and the Vice-President found a way to escape that war. What Rove did was to find a way to take this strong feature and make it a target of an attack, by suggesting false and misleading facts about his service in Vietnam, to weaken this feature of his character: that’s swiftboating. Lawrence Lessig ☀
Tuesday 23 October 2007
The problem, from Reich’s (and my) perspective, is that the other half of us - the part that thinks not as an actor in a market, but as a citizen - has atrophied. That is, the half of us (again, of each of us - Reich’s point is that each of us has these two parts) that demands that government set sensible and efficient limits on private action has atrophied. Deep skepticism about government has made most of us turn away from it as a tool of sensible policy making. We instead (and this is a truly brilliant part of the book) turn to corporations to make good policy in government’s stead. We push for “corporate social responsibility” and praise corporations who agree to do the “good” thing, imagining that this means something other than the “money making” thing. This, Reich says, is “politics diverted” - trusting companies to do good policy rather than getting government to set good policy, imagining “corporate social responsibility” will produce something different from corporations maximizing profits. Lessig ☀
Tuesday 9 October 2007
Lessig on “corruption”
☀Saturday 6 October 2007
Friday 13 July 2007
A dark force, however, has influenced Lucasfilm’s adoption of Eyespot’s technology. A careful reading of Lucasfilm’s terms of use show that in exchange for the right to remix Lucasfilm’s creativity, the remixer has to give up all rights to what he produces. In particular, the remixer grants to Lucasfilm the “exclusive right” to the remix — including any commercial rights — for free. To any content the remixer uploads to the site, he grants to Lucasfilm a perpetual non-exclusive right, again including commercial rights and again for free. Upload a remix and George Lucas, and only Lucas, is free to include it on his Web site or in his next movie, with no compensation to the creator. You are not even permitted to post it on YouTube. Upload a particularly good image as part of your remix, and Lucas is free to use it commercially with no compensation to the creator. The remixer is allowed to work, but the product of his work is not his. Put in terms appropriately (for Hollywood) over the top: The remixer becomes the sharecropper of the digital age. Lawrence Lessig ☀
Tuesday 19 June 2007
I have decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism, away from the issues that have consumed me for the last 10 years, towards a new set of issues: Namely, these. “Corruption” as I’ve defined it elsewhere will be the focus of my work. For at least the next 10 years, it is the problem I will try to help solve. Lawrence Lessig ☀
Wednesday 6 June 2007
But what is puzzling about this book is that it purports to be a book attacking the sloppiness, error and ignorance of the Internet, yet it itself is shot through with sloppiness, error and ignorance. It tells us that without institutions, and standards, to signal what we can trust (like the institution (Doubleday) that decided to print his book), we won’t know what’s true and what’s false. But the book itself is riddled with falsity — from simple errors of fact, to gross misreadings of arguments, to the most basic errors of economics. So how could it be that a book criticizing the Internet — because the product of a standardless process where nothing is “vetted for accuracy” (as he says of Wikipedia) — could itself be so mistaken, when it, presumably, has been “vetted for accuracy” and was only selected for publication because it passed the high standards of truth imposed by its publisher — Doubleday? Lawrence Lessig ☀
Tuesday 22 May 2007
So I’ve gotten (literally) scores of emails about this piece by Mark Helprin promoting perpetual copyright terms. “Write a reply!” is the demand. But why don’t you write the reply instead. Here’s a page on wiki.lessig.org. Please write an argument that puts this argument in its proper place. Lawrence Lessig ☀
Sunday 18 March 2007
Wednesday 14 March 2007
Ok, so just about 10 years after the content industry got Congress to adopt one of the most sweeping changes in American copyright law (aka, the DMCA), the content industry has decided that it doesn’t like one part of that law — the Safe Harbor Provision that protects sites such as YouTube. But rather than go to Congress to get them to change the law, the content industry, knowing Congress would not change the law, turns to its new best friend — the common law of copyright, as articulated by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Grokster. Why burden Congress with the hassle of law making when you’ve got a Supreme Court eager to jump in and legislate? At least, that is, when there’s no Constitutional issue at stake. When the Constitution’s at stake, then it is a matter for — you guessed it — Congress. Lawrence Lessig ☀
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