Monthly Archives: September 2002

extremely funny parody

of my Red Herring piece by a favorite boy genius…. Continue reading

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the untold story of floridian bravery

Say what you will about Florida. I’m a new fan…. Continue reading

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time out

I stupidly have fueled two extremely fruitful debates–one about software copyright, and the other about Palladium and end-to-end values–stupidly because there is a third debate I need to be focused on just now. But there is a limit to the attention “limited Times” can demand. Back soon, I promise, to debates that in their civility and seriousness show the best of what this space can be…. Continue reading

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free my code

RMS wrote with kind words about the substance of my OSCON talk, but with fair criticism about its form. Flash!, for all its magic, is not “free” in the relevant sense. Can’t I, RMS asks, put this up in a free form? He volunteered to OGG the MP3 file. But is there someone who has played with the emerging free video tools enough to be able to convert the mix of text and images into a free form? I’d love to tinker with it, but there are mice to be freed…. Continue reading

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careful and fair critique

Ted Shelton has a careful and fair critique of my response to his original critique of my proposal for reducing state support for oblique creativity. We are completely agreed about one important point: That the ultimate question here is which system provides the best incentives to create and spread knowledge. As I read Ted’s response, the only dispute is about whether my condition upon getting copyright protection (that you escrow source code which, when the copyright expires, is free) would be too much of a penalty for software authors that they would instead choose private protection (secrecy) over public. That’s… Continue reading

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where in the network?

Right-to-tinker maven Ed Felton is skeptical that copyprotection would be placed in the network. “From an engineer standpoint, that assumption looks wrong to me,” he says. But what if we looked at Fritz “not an engineer” Holling’s perspective? The point of my article is that Congress is pushing copyprotection in the network, whatever engineers would argue is ideal. A differend DRM would undermine that push. (But so too would a different Congress for that matter.)… Continue reading

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wow.

This is beautiful, Doc. And key. It’s not in my constitution to be optimistic, but if only msft would become as you hope. Talk about a legacy. Remember, it was Sony that defended the vcr, before they became a content company…. Continue reading

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the coke classic

Ted Shelton has some very thoughtful and balanced criticisms of my criticisms of “opaque creativity.” He writes that I am wrong: that IP creation in the past was always transparent and that today we have a new problem of obscuring production or presentation. Coca-cola, for example, has never disclosed their recipe for Coke — Would Lessig compel them to disclose this recipe? Is this the kind of transparency he is looking for? It’s a great example, but I think it cuts the other way…. Continue reading

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v.cool

Ok, so this is insanely cool. Get yours quick…. Continue reading

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an optimist? I wish

Ernie accuses me of optimism because of a piece in the Red Herring. In that piece, I argue that obsession about antitrust issues blinds us to other (also important) network and policy issues. And one in particular was how different DRM systems affect the network differently. Some, the argument goes, better support the end-to-end architecture that the network originally valued, and it would be easier to assure that token systems did so than copy protection systems. (Copyfight as usual puts it better than I.) Does that make me an optimist? Wouldn’t that be nice. But no: I am not arguing… Continue reading

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