New Neutrality testimony

Posted on February 10, 2006 by Lessig

My Senate Commerce Committee for the Net Neutrality hearing is here.

Posted in good code | 5 Comments

A special Lessig-Blog invitation

Posted on February 10, 2006 by Lessig

teach2.jpg
Photo CC-BY licensed by Lainmoon.

A special invitation to Lessig-Blog readers: On Friday, February 17, at 6 pm, Elisabeth Shue will introduce Davis Guggenheim‘s newly CC licensed film, Teach. This extraordinary film grows out of Guggenheim’s Peabody Award winning film, The First Year. The film is about 30 minutes long, and there’s a reception afterwards.

To attend, you MUST RSVP. The event will be held at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, at 1800 Market Street, San Francisco. Come if you can, but again, RSVP if you want to come.

Posted in creative commons | 1 Comment

Google Book Search: Keeping the facts straight

Posted on February 9, 2006 by Lessig

Some smart folks at Google have set up a group on Google Groups to do fact checking in the Google Book Search debate. Sign up and get your regular feed about the lies mistakes feeding this debate. Here’s a snippet from the first post:

In December, novelist Susan Cheever, a member of the Authors Guild, published “Just Google ‘thou shalt not steal,’” an article suggesting that there’s some kind of official word limit, or percentage limit, to material you can copy in order for it to qualify as fair use. She writes:

“The Copyright Statute…includes a ‘fair use’ clause, so that a few lines or phrases of a writer’s work can be used as illustration by someone else. …The amount of words that constitute fair use varies according to court case. At present, it is 400 words. …Google cites ‘fair use,’ but it isn’t using 400 words; it plans to digitize whole libraries and make them available piece by piece.” (Emphasis added.)

Even this small quotation from Cheever’s article fundamentally misstates copyright law and misleads readers about Google Book Search..

First, no such 400-word rule exists. Indeed, in some cases courts have ruled that copying and republishing the entire work is fair use. (You can read about one such court decision here.)

Second, Google does not show more than two or three sentences without the author’s permission. And that’s not all. If a copyright holder chooses not to participate in Google Book Search, not a single word from the book will appear in any searches.

Posted in good code | 27 Comments

On this day, 10 years ago

Posted on February 8, 2006 by Lessig

On February 8, 1996, Congress enacted the 1996 Telecom Act, which included the Communications Decency Act. After the President signed both laws, John Perry Barlow, at Davos, issued his “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.”

The Supreme Court struck the core of the CDA within 16 months. The Telecom Act is still being litigated, and Congress is now talking about trashing it.

But John Perry’s Declaration is still a great read.

Posted in Read This | 9 Comments

Very good “fair use” opinion re Google’s cache

Posted on January 25, 2006 by Lessig

A district court in Nevada has rejected the claim that Google’s cache violates copyright law. The opinion is grounded both on “fair use” and implied license. The “fair use” part of the opinion is fantastic. But interestingly, the “implied license” part of the opinion weakens any such claim in the context of Google Book Search.

Posted in Read This | 75 Comments

The Anti-Lessig Reader Wiki

Posted on January 20, 2006 by Lessig

I’ve created a wiki for work critical of my own work. The aim is to build a text that would complement my own work. I’d be grateful for any help people could provide. Think of the entries as essentially “But see” c/sites.

The wiki is here.

Posted in eye | 7 Comments

Has your phone been locked?

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Lessig

From Jennifer Granick, director of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society:

The Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society is collecting stories about problems with locked cell phones to support our request to the Copyright Office for an exemption to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions for cell phone unlocking. The original comments filed are here. These will be for the reply comments.

If you have a good story, know someone who does, or are aware of a community of people who might be interested, please send the link to them.

Posted in bad code | 21 Comments

Waldmeir on Google Book Search

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Lessig

From the FT: “The basic social compromise over copyright can surely only be furthered by indexing all this creativity so that other people can find it.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

The Read-Write Internet

Posted on January 17, 2006 by Lessig

amv.jpg

I wrote this piece for the FT about the next war in copyright. If you’ve not seen AMVs, you should. Look here.

This will be the next big copyright war — whether this form of noncommercial creativity will be allowed. But there will be a big difference with this war and the last (over p2p filesharing). In the p2p wars, the side that defended innovation free of judicial supervision was right. But when ordinary people heard both sides of the argument, 90% were against us. In this war, the side that will defend these new creators is right. And when ordinary people hear both sides, and more importantly, see the creativity their kids are capable of, 90% will be with us.

I saw this first hand in the eyes of a father. From the FT piece:

But to those building the Read-Write internet, economics is not what matters. Nor is it what matters to their parents. After a talk in which I presented some AMV work, a father said to me: “I don’t think you really realise just how important this is. My kid couldn’t get into college till we sent them his AMVs. Now he’s a freshman at a university he never dreamed he could attend.”

These are creators, too. Their creativity harms no one. It is the heart of a whole new genre of creativity — not just with anime, but will all sorts of culture. If, that is, it is allowed.

Update: A relevant City of Heroes video on in-game IP.

Posted in bad law | 34 Comments

Google Book Search: The Argument

Posted on January 14, 2006 by Lessig

So there’s a corrected version of the Google Book Search video here on youTube. Very cool video sharing service, just ripe for CC licenses.

The essence of the argument here builds upon the “market failure” justification for fair use: We recognize fair use where there’s a prominent market failure. Here, the market failure is caused by the insanely inefficient property system copyright law is. Given that, the use Google makes is plainly “fair use.”

Update: This is an updated version that substitutes a photograph. I stupidly used a photo without checking the license. The substituted photo is a beautiful image by fuzzbabble on Flickr. My apologies to the very talented Andrea K. Gingerich.

Posted in good law | 16 Comments