Lessig Blog Archives

here they go again

Posted on September 27, 2005 by Lessig

WIPO’s latest destructive regulation: The Broadcasting and Webcasting Treaty. Jamie Boyle nails it.

CPTech has an action page. So too does the EFF.

Google has been sued by the Authors Guild, and a number of individual authors. This follows similar threats hinted at by the American Association of Publishers. The authors and the publishers consider Google’s latest fantastic idea, Google Print — a project to Google-ize 20,000,000 books — to be “massive copyright infringement.” They have asked a federal court to shut Google Print down.

It is 1976 all over again. Then, like now, content owners turned to the courts to stop an extraordinary new technology. Then, like now, copyright is the weapon of choice. But then, like now, the content owners of course don’t really want the court to stop the new technology. Then, like now, they simply want to be paid for the innovations of someone else. Then, like now, the content owners ought to lose.

This is the best case to illustrate the story I told at the start of Free Culture. Property law since time immemorial had held that your land reached from the ground to the heavens. Then airplanes were invented — a technology oblivious to this ancient law. A couple of farmers sued to enforce their ancient rights — insisting airplanes can’t fly over land without their permission. And thus the Supreme Court had to decide whether this ancient law — much older than the law of copyright — should prevail over this new technology.

The Supreme Court’s answer was perfectly clear: Absolutely not. “Common sense revolts at the idea,” Justice Douglas wrote. And with that sentence, hundreds of years of property law was gone, and the world was a much wealthier place.

So too should common sense revolt at the claims of this law suit. I’m an academic, so this is a bit biased, but: Google Print could be the most important contribution to the spread of knowledge since Jefferson dreamed of national libraries. It is an astonishing opportunity to revive our cultural past, and make it accessible. Sure, Google will profit from it. Good for them. But if the law requires Google (or anyone else) to ask permission before they make knowledge available like this, then Google Print can’t exist. Given the total mess of copyright records, there is absolutely no way to enable this sort of access to our past while asking permission of authors up front. Or at least, even if Google could afford that cost, no one else could.

Google’s use is fair use. It would be in any case, but the total disaster of a property system that the Copyright Office has produced reinforces the conclusion that Google’s use is fair use. And for all those people who devoted years of their life to defend the right to p2p file-sharing — here’s your chance to show what this battle is really about:

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 “authors'” claims, if true, mean Google itself is illegal. Common sense, or better, commons sense, revolts at the idea. And so too should you.

Posted in bad code | 95 Comments

try^d’s first album

Posted on September 16, 2005 by Lessig

Try^d’s first album is now up: title – Public Domain. Available through Opsound and on their site.

Posted in good code | 6 Comments

“OpenCongress” as in not about Congress

Posted on September 16, 2005 by Lessig

The name confused me at first, but only because of blind US-centrism. “OpenCongress” is a site for researchers studying “how methodologies derived from Free/Libre and Open Source Software [FLOSS] production can be deployed by those working in the area of art, visual culture and cultural production in general.”

Posted in good code | 2 Comments

OECD on scientific publishing

Posted on September 16, 2005 by Lessig

I’m about half-way through this new OECD report about scientific publishing. I don’t believe it is out on the OECD site, so consider this an advance copy.

Posted in good code | Leave a comment

Moderates on Radicals

Posted on September 12, 2005 by Lessig

Guest blogger Cass Sunstein was on NPR’s Fresh Air (the one show I’d cheat to get on) about his new book, Radicals in Robes. He didn’t want me to mention it, but I don’t listen (to him; I listen to NPR).

UPDATE: Apparently, while Senator Hatch has had a chance to read Cass’s book, Judge Robert’s has not.

Posted in good code | 6 Comments

gifts from the other side

Posted on September 11, 2005 by Lessig

O’Reilly’s “moral to the story” of the Katrina disaster is a perfect plan for the opposition. His basic message: see, this shows government doesn’t work, so don’t rely on it. The response it invites: see, this shows how we need to make government work. Government has failed. Must government fail?

(Meanwhile, Fox had some fantastic reporting on all this. Gone were the sycophants in the field. Here are two great examples, snipped from a fantastic article at Salon. (Thanks, Lauren.))

Posted in politics | 26 Comments

the catastrophe, round 3?

Posted on September 11, 2005 by Lessig

This American Life‘s episode this week, “After the Flood,” is an extraordinary collection of stories from New Orleans. Most extraordinary among the lot was the clear picture it gave of the work by some bit of government down there to forbid people from leaving the city. The story is told by a group of paramedics at a convention in New Orleans; it is about the force used to keep them (and others) from leaving.

However outrageous not being prepared was, however insane was the delay in reaction, this, imho, is the worst. Listen.

Posted in just plain wrong | 15 Comments

from the FSF – learning

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Lessig

From the Free Software Foundation, an opportunity to learn more about the GPL:

“The GPL is employed by tens of thousands of software projects aroundthe world, of which the Free Software Foundation’s GNU system is a tiny fraction. The GNU system, when combined with Linus Torvalds’Linux—which has evolved into a flexible, highly-portable,industry-leading operating system kernel—along with Samba, MySQL, and other GPL’d programs, offers superior reliability and adaptability to Microsoft’s operating systems, at nominal cost. GPL’d software runs on or is embedded in devices ranging from cellphones, PDAs and home networking appliances to mainframes and supercomputing clusters. Independent software developers around the world, as well as every large corporate IT buyer and seller, and a surprisingly large proportion of individual users, interact with the GPL.”

– Richard Stallman, FSF President; and Eben Moglen, FSF General Counsel

Whether your business or its clients deal first-hand with free
software or not, it has become a part of the environment that is
impossible to ignore.

The nonprofit Free Software Foundation, in association with Columbia
Law School, is offering a one-day seminar on the GPL and Legal Aspects
of Free Software Development at Columbia Law School in New York City,
NY on Wednesday, September 28, 2005.

As the GPL continues to consolidate its position as the copyleft
license of choice, it becomes ever more important that lawyers,
executives, and engineers become knowledgeable of the license. The
Free Software Foundation will shortly be releasing a draft of GPLv3,
and is making available this legal seminar to help educate on the key
issues of software development and license compliance.

The seminar will be led by Daniel Ravicher, Senior Counsel to the FSF
and Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation; Eben Moglen,
General Counsel to the FSF and Executive Director of the Software
Freedom Law Center; and David Turner, the FSF’s lead GPL Compliance
Engineer.

The cost per person is $500 if you register before September 1, or
$600 if you register on or after September 1. Breakfast and lunch will
be provided. Further information about the course schedule, and
registration instructions, can be found here.

For attorneys, the seminar will almost certainly count for CLE credits
in the state of New York, and possibly other states as well. We are
awaiting final approval, and will announce the number of approved
credits when we get it.

here they go again

Google Sued

try^d’s first album

“OpenCongress” as in not about Congress

OECD on scientific publishing

Moderates on Radicals

gifts from the other side

the catastrophe, round 3?

from the FSF – learning

Kessler on metro WiFi

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