January 9, 2009 12:01 pm
Matt Tobey
Matt Tobey
When I was in college I was a file clerk for a major corporation's intellectual property legal department, so I actually know a thing or two about copyright law. Like, for example, did you know that if you go to the back corner in the very last row of cabinets in the file room and sit on the floor against the wall with a few files strewn around you and a couple drawers open, you can nap for hours without anyone being the wiser? It's important to put a chair or something near the door though, so it makes enough racket to wake you up if someone comes in. As you might imagine, Stephen Colbert's interview with Lawrence Lessig last night was all pretty familiar ground for me.
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Lessig has a copyright on that book. If he really believed what he writes about he would not. Don't get suckered by this guy.
Stephen Colbert is a reactionary who doesn't understand anything other than what the lowest common denominator understands. He reflects the understanding of the uneducated so perfectly it's uncanny. He plays on the lack of understanding of most people.
What I'm surprised was never mentioned here is the fact that Disney has been "Remixing" stories like Cinderella, Snow White, The Wizard of OZ, The Little Mermaid, etc, etc etc… for many many years. And, yet, no one seems to care. All of those works had copyrights that had expired and Disney used them without permission because they knew that they could… yet, every time Mickey Mouse is about to be released into public domain (due to copyright limitation) the law gets changed.
The original intent of the passage in the constitution which says following:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings…"
This passage is the birthplace of the copyright and patent laws as they originally stood. The original term of copyright was 14 years. Please not that, in the passage it says "limited time." This means that, eventually, any work which is copyrighted MUST pass into the public domain. The idea behind this was to allow other authors to use those ideas as source for their work so that the can build upon it.
Currently, copyright law has been extended and extended and extended over and over again for the gain of the the bigwhigs who are in charge of the media companies. It has, essentially, been made FOREVER.. because now it's the life of the individual plus 75 (it might be 95 now) years.
If you look around you, this has effectively reduced creativity because less is going into the public domain and therefore less works derived from those works are being created. Fewer people are able to find inspiration for their work or can even be bothered to be creative because of the maze of craziness that Lawrence was talking about.
Is this the world Stephen is defending while calling sharing "Communism"?? Stephen is the poster child for the people who call open source, free software, or anything which changes the status quo "Communism." Sharing is not communism… it is, by definition a very capitalist venture because it forces you to compete with better products. Please see: http://www.freeos.com/articles/4133/ for discussion about this.
I haven't read Remix, but I plan to.
Sincerely Yours,
Gregory John Casamento
Rob, you're an idiot. You should look to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(book) and then you'd see that it will be available for free download under a creative commons license.
Do your research – if you knew anything about Lessig, you would have known this already.
You missed the point, Rob. His book is copyrighted under a permissive license that allows remixing. He doesn't want to abolish copyright, just change the copyright system.
Gregory, I really hope you realize what role Colbert plays and why he plays it on TV. It's called acting and he's usually representing people that he thinks are idiots – in order to make fun of them.
The fact that he has Lessig on to state his views and get his message out, while Colbert takes on the role of the reactionary idiot, should be obvious.
Plain and simple a majority of copyright infringement is due to that fact people cant afford it. Theres a reason the music and movie business dont lose money, because the people "stealing" the media would have never in the first place every purchased it. Yes 99cents for a song seems great but in reality, if you want any kind of good collection ti will cost quite a bit. want 200 songs? well thats $200, not factoring in certain media plans, which is the future if the media business hopes to counter piracy. Zune has a unlimited $15/mo plan, now that to me is a good deal. I am in fact going to research it and probably purchase it. Movies and music make there money with DVD sales along with there multi million dollar box offices and Live concerts.