Lessig Video: Deregulate Culture - Copyright Law Does Not Make Sense

In this video of a speech from the ABA Techshow, Professor Lawrence Lessig has put together a powerful political manifesto for those wishing to deregulate culture. He points out how internet code has created new artistic norms, abilities to speak and communicate through video and music that are being marginalized, stifled and criminalized without regard to the First Amendment. He joins a thoughtful, enjoyable legal and historical analysis of the internet, of the interaction of law, norms, market and architecture on human behavior and the problems we face with a plan to reduce the impact of big money on Congress.

Watch the video, he can't be accused of thinking small.

His Manichean vision of Congress and the current state of big money influencing Congress (Lessig seeks to "kill off the bad" and "strike evil") is pure Ralph Nader.

About money and Congress, Nader was right, Lessig is right. This video, and Lessig's ideas, are tremendously important.

Whether we need a new Messiah to smite evil is a different story.

From http://www.rootstrikers.com/about/

About
Money is corrupting our democracy. Our country's founders intended our government to be dependent upon the people alone—but today, lawmakers spend up to 70% of their time raising money for their reelection campaigns. In 2010, it cost an average of $8.5 million to win a Senate seat. Barack Obama is expected to spend over $1 billion on his reelection campaign. Where do we think this money comes from?

We need a democracy that's dependent on the people, not the funders. Government won't change itself. We need a grassroots movement to fight the corrupting influence of money in politics.

Thoreau wrote, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of our political evils is money. Our goal is to build a network of rootstrikers—to talk about this issue, clearly identify the problem, and work together towards practical reforms.

Rootstrikers is a project of Fix Congress First, a nonprofit organization founded in 2008 by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi to fight the corrupting influence of money in politics.

Joe Trippi's website says the following:

Joe Trippi is one of the most sought-after political strategists and an enduring figure on the presidential campaign circuit. He worked for Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart and turned Howard Dean into an unlikely front runner in 2004. A former Silicon Valley consultant, Trippi was the first political operative to appreciate and then realize the potential of the internet, and as such the strategy, tactics and tools he created in 2004 have become the foundation for many of today\'s most successful campaigns.

So the guy who created Howard Dean is going to combat the evils of money in politics?  Presumably if I send him some evil money?

Lessig's core thesis of deregulating culture is a powerful one.  But when he moves off message to Wikileaks and politics, the polish wears thin.  I am not so sure that Wikileaks really brought democracy to the Middle East, but I am in agreement that our expenditures on foreign expeditionary wars cloaked in democratic rhetoric are a collosal waste of money.

Lessig ought to lighten up on the combating evil stuff, be a bit more nuanced and tighten his focus to win on the ground where he is strong: criminalization of creativity.  It's kind of tough to save culture AND end wars at the same time, standing next to a guy bragging that he was Howard Dean's internet bag man. It wouldn't be the first time an idealistic young crusader went to Washington, was used by the establishment, had his pockets emptied and idealism shattered. Lessig is correct that deregulation of copyright law is a sensible and reasonable thing.  But it's not enough to be right.  Coalition-building, consensus and compromise are not necessarily dirty words and people who don't agree with you are not necessarily evil or insane.   Even if they are dead wrong.

Again, watch the speech, he is a brilliant thinker and his message is important.

Thanks to Cyberlaw Central for bringing the Lessig speech up, Kevin Thompson's take here.

More on Remix culture here.

WSJ endorses Lessig here.

My review of Lessig's book Remix.

 http://www.dunnington.com/rdowd_bio.html
 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Copyright Law: WSJ Column Endorses Prof. Lawrence Lessig "On the Economics": Curse of the Copyright Holders

WSJ columnist Tony Woodlief ran into what he believed to be ridiculous demands of copyright holders and opted out of using the materials. In doing so, he endorsed Prof. Lawrence Lessig, the leading light of the Copyleft movement "on the economics".
Lessig fought the Copyright Term Extension Act at the U.S. Supreme Court.  Woodlief's column shows how contemporary writers are penalized when copyright holders don't permit what ought to be fair use of the works.

Here is the link:

Tony Woodlief: Curse of the Copyright Holders and Their Fee-Seeking Lawyers, - WSJ.com

Update:  The Legal Satyricon disagrees with Woodlief here

Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here

10th Cir: Golan v Holder - First Amendment Challenge to Berne Convention's Taking Works Out of Public Domain Retroactively Fails

The 10th Circuit ruled yesterday against a group of distributors of foreign copyrighted works that had fallen into the public domain, but which Congress had restored copyright status by 1994 legislation implementing the Berne Convention, following the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.

The group, represented in part by Prof. Lawrence Lessig and the Center for Internet and Society, included a man who had composed a marching band song based on a Shostakovitch symphony that had fallen into the public domain.

The situation arose because the US used to have a rule that if you didn't put a copyright notice on your work and register it with the US copyright office, it would fall into the public domain.   Many distributors of foreign copyrighted works failed to put proper notices on them or register them with the copyright office.  Notices and registration are known as "formalities".   For a while, the US was a rare country that required formalities, most didn't, pursuant to the Berne Convention.   The US enacted the Berne Convention Implementation Act in 1988 abolishing the requirement of formalities, but it did not restore copyright protection to foreign works that had fallen out of copyright.  In 1994, Congress restored copyright protection to these foreign works (it was not automatic and involved some bureaucracy).  People who'd used the works or created derivative works were supposed to work out reasonable license fees or have them fixed by the courts.

You can find the requirement of formalities in the Copyright Act of 1909.  I have included the entire 1909 Copyright Act for easy reference as an appendix to my Copyright Litigation Handbook.

The decision has a lot of interesting legislative history, and it's got a lot of litigation history.  (From my memory) it was in district court where plaintiff lost, there was an appeal that plaintiff won with instruction to perform a First Amendment analysis on remand, then plaintiff won again with the district judge holding that the statute violated the First Amendment.  Now, the 10th Circuit reverses, link to decision below:

10th Cir: Golan v Holder - First Amendment Challenge To Removal of Copyrighted Works From Public Domain Fails



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Remixing Videos Without Permission: Remix Culture - Analysis of Mashups in American Culture

Comment on Copyfight about a great video on Remix culture, Youtube and the battle for creative control over American culture.  Watch it.