Lessig

Well, I don't agree with everything he says, but at least it seems like he has a relatively thoughtful view about things, certainly relative to some of the things he is reported to have said in the past.

It really makes me feel like I would love to get stuck up a mountain with him for a few days just to drill into his opinions and correct those with which I disagree.

In particular, the issue around DRM, I don't agree with it for the simple reason that a piece of software or hardware that I own should do what I tell it to do. Any strong advocate of property rights should sympathise with this view. You own your property, it doesn't own you.

Raising the medical records issue is clever, since I think many advocates of freedom of information are often prone to self-contradiction when the issue of privacy comes up - personally I think David Brin's transparent society argument is a logically consistent way to reconcile the two issues.

Speaking to the issue of medical records - it is the responsibility of doctors not to inappropriately reveal medical information, it is not the responsibility of Microsoft to prevent doctors from revealing information in ways that might actually be appropriate (such as in revealing to a person's sexual partner that they may have been exposed to AIDS). Any doctor that was so-prevented might rightly be annoyed that Microsoft had taken upon itself act as policeman in this way.

I loved where he tried to claim that Free Software was more communist than China. At least that's how I read it. I'm sure tomorrow he'll claim that's not what he meant.

It is true that China's experiments in the free market have weakened big-C Communism. That may be all he was trying to say.

However, since many of those creative Indian and Chinese programmers have chosen to release their own work as open source, I don't see how that induces the rest of the world away from the free market. In fact, a free market encourages lower costs and better products. I don't see how open source violates free market laws.

The point of creative commons is not 'sticking it to the man', it's about enabling the creator. And in doing so accelerating the progress of mankind..

I'm left feeling more confused that before... I read the CNET interview, and unless Gates was drastically misquoted there, he still called me a communist (commonsist?). The "clarification" seems confused and disconnected; almost as if he was taken by surprise with that question... THAT is the part that's surprising to me; that the answer was handled so poorly.

Great points? He makes great points like remarking about lawyers making obscene amounts of money on the blog of a legal academic who gives a lot away. I move that the last comment be stricken on grounds of relevance. Well, at least add my objection to the record.

Gates seemed honest by putting it to a test of capitalism, not "compensation" -- did capitalism motivate Turing, von Neumann, Einstein? No, they need to be compensated in order to live comfortably, but they certainly weren't strongarming people for profit at some big boring megacorp.

Indeed, Albert Einstein explained:

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules."

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career."

Ralph Nader elaborated:

"Microsoft's agenda isn't innovation, it's imitation, as well as imposition of suffocating control over user choices and an ever-widening monopoly. [...] Companies spend an enormous amount of resources anticipating and responding to Microsoft's use of restrictive contracts, strategically shifting standards, manipulation of product compatibility, and other forms of monopolistic warfare."

[...]

"Even in the area of anticompetitive conduct, Microsoft is mainly an imitator."

Ex-Microsoftie Joel Spolsky confirms:

"Think of the history of data access strategies to come out of Microsoft. ODBC, RDO, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, now ADO.NET - All New! Are these technological imperatives? The result of an incompetent design group that needs to reinvent data access every goddamn year? (That's probably it, actually.) But the end result is just cover fire. The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and keeping up, time that they can't spend writing new features."

Ask yourself why Bill Gates has wealth on the order of the Walmart family, or why the immensely profitable desktop world has a tiny oligarchy of two. (Don't forget the MS Tax, or embracing and extending other people's good ideas.)

Sorry, Turing and von Neumann.

I need to use preview more.

The medical records thing is absolute bull:
Once someone has seen the medical records, they can send it to anyone at all - by typing it in again.
The only way to 'solve' this kind of thing is multi-level military security : where you don't get to see the data at all, but only get to pass it around to processes with sufficient priveledge to operate on it.

Think of this as carrying round information in a safe, which some people- not you- have keys to. You can ask them to do stuff with it, but only what they are willing to.

This is very different than current DRM technologies - and it can never work for media as at some point you have to see or hear it for it to have value.
Repeat after me: If you can view it, you can copy it.

If he "takes no position" on DRM, why do MS published games on the XBox use it, and why isn't he campaigning against the DMCA?

"After a half century of monopoly protection granted artists in exchange for their creative work, the public will get its justly earned free access to an extraordinary range of both famous and forgotten creativity."

"Justly Earned?" Are you kidding me?

Lessig - creators will put their work in the public domain whether or not such community-has-rights-over-creator mentality exists.

All your blustering is not encouraging people to GPL or CC their stuff. It's only dissapointing them and weakening GPL and CC. Who's going to respect GPL and you don't even think we should respect the rights of the creator?

By saying things like 'justly earned' you are saying that the community has rights over the work of creators.

"You want me to GPL my stuff because you GPL'd yours? Who are you to talk? You're just the creator". That's the kind of philosophy you are encouraging.

This is complete garbage to us who create. You are not helping the cause of creative commons or GPL, which are really great ideas and are suffering because people like you are figureheads.

CC and GPL is about providing your work under a different type of copyright in the hope of recieving benefits not possible with a more propietary copryright.

This flexibility empowers the creator to benefit in ways that are interesting to them. In doing so, empowering the creator, you empower the fountainhead of progress.

Helping the community is interesting to many creators. But sometimes, the creator knows a heckuva lot more about creating than you do, and knows that benefiting financially from the strong copyright of their work makes complete sense.

In fact, it empowers them to write software that they can GPL or content they can CC.

"Justly Earned" - no wonder people are throwing around terms like 'communism'.

I originally put this on my blog,but I repeat it here:
I still think Bill do not see the basic issue though. He still defends IP like it is a black and white issue. For me IP issues are like taxes. I think everyone agree that taxes are a good thing, but that doesn't mean that having everyone paying 100% tax would be the best thing. People from different sides of the political spectrum have different ideas on what the sweet spot for taxes are, but the number who go for 0% or 100% is marginal. Bill's argument seems to be that since 20% tax is working out so well we should jump much closer to 100% as that naturally would work out 5 times better.

So to keep with the analogy, I think most in our camp, the IP sceptics, think that we have slided towards 50% in regards to IP, especially due to rampant software patenting, and need to get back to 20% for society to work as well as possible, while Bill and his buddies wants to go to 80% or higher.

Another important item is that all things are not the same. I know how patents work out in the software world, and see that they are currently causing more harm than good. That doesn't mean the patent system is broken for the medical research sector for instance, could very well be that it is, but I don't know the sector well enough to say. IP maximalists tend to try to mush everything together in order to be able to say that since patents work well for 'this' it of course works equally well for 'that'.

What Gates doesn't get is there are more forms of capital than money. There's also (at least) social capital & intellectual capital, both of which can be used to compensate a creator for his creativity. The result is called a Gift Economy, such as we see in the Open Source community. Creators contribute to a common pool and get back social status & increased innovation for the community as a whole.

There was a study of economic data across all of Europe, which proved a direct, causal relationship between connectivity of an organization & its increase in innovation & productivity. The more you share, the more you stimulate the economy. Open Source is compatible with Capitalism. Ultimately I think we'll come to recognize that we need to harness its power if we want to increase our productivity.

Tim

it seems to me from the structure of his reaction and his delivery that he is regurgitating something which his pr experts cursorally briefed him on before appearing.

In short: i don't believe a word of his in that interview

One problem is that Gates (well, Microsoft, but I'm sure Gates signed off on it) has advertised DRM as a way to protect copyrighted works. However, I don't think the company has advertised DRM to comply with HIPA.

Can't you guys argue about the same thing?

Some of you are arguing about patents, and some are talking about copyrights. Processes (and algorithms, I suppose) are patentable, but the patent expires in 17 years. For better or worse, that's the law. Nobody can copy that process (or algorithm) for 17 years.

Copyrights are a particular expression of an idea or process (OK, so I'm not a lawyer and I don't really know exactly what I'm talking about). So a musical song or artwork is copyrighted but not patented. That particular expression is protected for whatever (50 years, 95 years, who really knows anymore).

Open source development has little to do with copyrights unless you're copying code (or "look and feel" which I guess is copyrighted) from somebody else who hasn't released it as GPL or CC or whatever. Now if you copy a patented algorithm, that's a problem, but only for 17 years.

Bill Gates is talking about DRM of copyrighted works, and he's completely ignoring software patents, which is what Open Source development is concerned about. BG has to work with the record companies, movie studios and whoever else so he has to support DRM.

Don't expect him to ever talk about software patents because he has to protect his patent portfolio so he can cross license with others who have bigger portfolios (like IBM) or critical partners (like Intel). You have to have a big portfolio or you can't do software. It would be different if nobody had software patents. But if you write code for a living, you've got to have some protection.

Now whether Open Source supports DRM is up to each program, OS, Distribution, etc. Linus Torvalds says he has nothing against supporting DRM. So are you gonna roast his cojones too?

Back to the privacy diversion Gates used. This line of argument needs to be countered, and forcefully, whenever it is raised by the pro-DRM crowd.

I once had a debate with a music industry executive in an international standards meeting where he essentially claimed that all digitzed copyrighted material can and should be protected by DRM backed up by anti-circumvention laws.

"All?" I responded, "What about a Haiku? It's poetry, copyrightable, and utterly unprotectible by DRM or anti-circumvention law."

His response was "That's a reduction to absurdity" [reductio ad absurdum].

It was. And so is any argument that DRM benefits privacy in a constructive way. What do we want to keep private?

Credit Score - 3 digits.
Bank Balance - 1 to 8 digits
AIDS test result? - One bit.
I'm sure you can think of dozens of others.

Justifying DRM by arguing that it can protect ONE BIT is idiocy.

In my view DRM is a huge threat to privacy because it obscures the operation and communications of my computer within the walls of my own home, where I have the greatest expectation of privacy of all.

There are a couple of points that seem to not be getting hit squarely:

- Bill made a grossly bad argument by analogy with medical records. There is a difference between idea and expression, and medical records are clearly not the latter. Control of medical records isn't enforced by copyright at all - it's enforced by lots of other laws and by organizational policy and procedure. The fact that individual medical documents might be subject to copyright (arguable in itself, depending on the document) misses the point.

- The fact that you can use the same protection to prevent medical information and music from being distributed against the supplier's will is another false analogy. After all, that's like saying that, because both can be encoded into bit streams and stored on a hard drive, they must be the same thing from a legal standpoint

- Even if Bill is just saying that he has made the technology available, without making a value judgment about it, he is still on the hook: our society holds accountable those who enable wrongdoing - witness the getaway driver, for example.

There are serious consequences to encrypting content - this stuff could be lost and gone forever if the rights granter goes out of business without providing the key. DRM leads to a fundamental shift from "everything will become public someday, with few exceptions" to "everything will remain private/protected forever, with few exceptions". It changes the default. By changing the default, it dramatically alters the balance that led to our current compensation system, by making the societal interest smaller and less likely to ever come to fruition.

This is why DRM is dangerous, and refusing to acknowledge that is morally irresponsible on the part of Gates.

Ralph Nader successfully fought against car makers who built UNSAFE cars. Where carmakers optimized the car to bring in profit, not transport people safely.

Same with DRM. There are sane forms of DRM. However, Gates wants the profits from the type which erodes your control -- you have to be authorized to do what you want.

As to the argument that consumers don't have to buy it, the "consumers" are making their voices heard by pushing back hard. Just as Bill Gates pushes back hard when a company doesn't do what he wants.

Good site. Jurassic Life

I don't get it. How does anything Prof. Lessig has said lead you (blaze) to believe that he is trying to restrict the rights of creators?

Lessig - creators will put their work in the public domain whether or not such community-has-rights-over-creator mentality exists.

Yeah, so? First off, the creator has had rights-over-community for 50 years; if he or she is even still alive at this point (what're the odds?) you have to admit they've had ample time to extract most of the monetary value from their creation. Don't you think that at some point the society has "paid its debt" to the creator, and is now entitled to some benefit for having granted the monopoly by getting access to the creation? What's it mean to be part of a society; you only take but never give? And regardless of that aspect, this means we should give a free pass to those same "second-handers" you mention? You can't have it both ways; if you enable individual creators to have perpetual copyright on their creations, you do the same for greedy opportunists who are just out to make a buck and have the financial backing to buy out (or dupe) the true creators. We (apparently) can't outlaw corporations or legislate them to act responsibly; so the only course open to us is to encourage the creators of the first instance to sign up to "freer" (to use Stallman's formulation) terms before the corporate shills can get to them. I don't believe for a moment that creators are going to give up megabux contracts with recording labels just to keep the rights to their songs. They expect the record labels to take care of that; all they want to see is their royalty checks being deposited every quarter (or whatever). You may be a paragon of virtue and release all your stuff under a CC license, but I doubt I'll hear it on the radio unless you sign with a recording label. And they're not going to do that unless you sign them the rights to your songs.

All your blustering is not encouraging people to GPL or CC their stuff. It's only dissapointing them and weakening GPL and CC. Who's going to respect GPL and you don't even think we should respect the rights of the creator?

Where'd you get this idea? I've never seen Prof. Lessig say that he doesn't respect the rights of creators; in fact he's repeatedly said just the opposite.

The real war has nothing to do with Copyright. CC and GPL is not about rolling back laws about content that really is a complete red herring.

Your statement is also a complete red herring- attempting to manufacture controversy where none exists. Where has Prof. Lessig ever stated that CC and GPL are about rolling back copyright? Yet the way you attribute his position, we are led to believe that he does in fact expect CC to replace traditional copyright protections. Untrue!

So I'm confused, not by Bill Gates' oh-so-convenient "I just build the bomb, I don't drop it" rhetoric, but by your complete lack of understanding of Prof. Lessig's positions and utter failure to appreciate his efforts to accomplish exactly the goals you seek- protection of the rights of the truely creative, over those of the parasitical.

So I'm confused, not by Bill Gates' oh-so-convenient "I just build the bomb, I don't drop it" rhetoric, but by your complete lack of understanding of Prof. Lessig's positions and utter failure to appreciate his efforts to accomplish exactly the goals you seek- protection of the rights of the truely creative, over those of the parasitical.

Yes, I've been having that problem with Blaze's posts as well. If anyone is confusing creators with distributors, it's Blaze, not Lessig. "Weakening copyright" by reducing over-extended copyright terms will not affect the amount of work that was produced 70 years ago...

Warren DeLano wrote:
LL and RSM's statements that society "earns" or is "entitled" to rights for creative works strike me as unhelpful.
It may well be fair trade, but it is certainly not society's right or an entitlement to do so.

What is creator without society? Means to express creativity - where they come from?

You want theater where there are only artists, who play for each other and no public?

It is hard to see long-term effects of copyright on public.
But hell it is easy to measure "last quater revenue lost to piracy".

But anyways, CC is supposed to be an extension of the power of Copyright by making it more flexible and enabling creators to subvert the corporate controllers of the media.

Why is lessig talking about reducing the power of copyright?

It makes absolutely no sense.

So I take it the interviewer was not bright enough to say:

"Mr. Gates, have you noticed that we do not live in China and that different information needs to be handled differently depending on its function?"

All his shucking and jiving about what China was like in the 50s or how he is only supplying a method for handling bits without any regard for how that method might lead to a specific end result is nausiating.

"Yes, Dr. Oppenheimer.. I understand we are supposed to build a device that creates a nuclear explosion... and I understand that we arent supposed to consider how it might be used or what impact it may have on humanity." After all particles are just particles the way bits are just bits.

I guess we can all summon-up emotionally charged red herrings from the 40s and 50s if we want to dodge the actual issues at hand....

I suspect that blaze is engaging in a purely economic analysis. All the talk is about "value" in monetary terms; there is no mention of the cultural benefits of having creative works available to the public, which is one of the main goals of the GPL and CC ideas: protecting the creation from unauthorized exploitation while still making it available for all.

And then we have this constant refrain:

Why is lessig talking about reducing the power of copyright?

Hel-lo, he's not, never has, where are you getting this from, blaze?

My analysis is based on the idea that we should give power to the creator, trust the (peaceful) creator (the real creator, not just the managers and lawyers) to do the right thing, and all will be well.

The very act of real creative, peaceful creation is one that requires a world view which is positive in all aspects. People who really create are almost always people who wish to bring good into the world.

Limiting copyright is not trusting the creator. It's watering down the power of their ownership over their creation.

Rob, did you visit the link I posted?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/view.html?pg=5

Lessig wrote:

"Governments should end this game by tinkering with copyright terms for future works .. they should at least limit .. by restricting extensions"

No, I said we should trust creators to do what is right.

By weakening copyright and the power of creators we will
simply constrain progress, we will not improve our freedoms.

By trusting creators and placing greater power in their hands (rather than lawyers, distributors, publishers, editors, middle men, etc) I believe you'll find that they'll have more security in our society and more time to publish GPL / CC / whatever.

The problem is that creators right now have to kow-tow to the second hander. They have to pay various dues which have absolutely nothing to do with creation. This is because we, as a society, do not value them as highly as they should be valued.

One idea that Lessig might want to propose: perhaps what we need is something called "Strong Copyright". If it is published in an appropiate form (like always password protected, for example) than the rights of the creator should be extended to infinity / fair use denied / etc.

But maybe this is just a variant of fair use law.

The enemy here folks, is not the creator.

It's the middle-man - the lawyer, the distributor that grips and twists the channels to their selfish desires for profit.

It's the middle man, the middle manager, the person who steals the work of another and passes it off as his own.

Unfairness in society is caused by these people - the Sony, the RIAA, the so called 'might makes right' .. the corporate controlled media.

These are the people we are all battling against. We have to stay united against them, and attacking creators is a division that weakens us all.

Middle men are not creators. They are self important individuals (or groups of individuals) who need to be creatively destroyed / replaced by search engines and trust networks, such as blogs. This should already be obvious.

It is the evolution of ideas that measures merit, the march of time - and always has been. It's the free market of ideas. Not so called experts who think they can predict the future.

Something is not going to change the world because Sony wants it to be. It's going to change the world because it changes the world.

And obviously no man is an island. I am not saying that. To pretend that I am saying that is a straw man attack.

GPL and CC are dealing with Microsoft far more effectively than any attack on Copyright ever will. The more we improve the power of GPL and CC the more Microsoft will have to truly 'innovate' and 'create' in order to stay alive.

Weakening copyright will not bring Microsoft down. GPL will. GPL relies on strong copyright, it relies on the ability for people who create software to enforce other software to be open sourced.

Strengthen GPL. Do *NOT* weaken Copyright. It will only shift power away from those who create.

Just because Disney no longer innovates doesn't mean the extension in Copyright was wrong. It's like saying just because a murderer thinks rape is wrong, we should get rid of the rape laws.

The focus should soley be in creating NEW FORMS of copyright that creators can use to subvert the monopolies and corporate control of media. Anything that weakens their position of strength should be avoided at all cost.

The focus should soley be in creating NEW FORMS of copyright that creators can use to subvert the monopolies and corporate control of media.

blaze, is that not what Creative Commons is about? And does not Prof. Lessig stand foresquare behind that concept? Your continuous attempts to paint him as somehow being against CC and the GPL are misguided (charitably). I read the Wired article you linked to (as did we all at some point, I'm sure) and nowhere does Prof. Lessig maintain that we need to safeguard big corporations or oppose the GPL. I just don't get what you're so worked up about with regards to Prof. Lessig. From all I've seen, he's on your side! He agrees with you!

Anything that weakens their position of strength should be avoided at all cost.

Whose "position of strength" are you referring to? The 'position of strength" of the monopolies and corporate-controlled media, who are using copyright extensions to squash any attempts at allowing fair use of their properties?

You seem to equate restricting the duration of copyright protection with "weakening" it. I have to say once again, I disagree with your analysis. While its duration runs, copyright protection will be as stringently applied as it ever has. The issue is the length of time such protection is to be granted; corporate entities want to have ownership in perpetuity (via the Constitutional fig-leaf of endlessly-extensible "limited times"). Are you seriously advocating that their wish be granted?

The problem is that creators right now have to kow-tow to the second hander. They have to pay various dues which have absolutely nothing to do with creation. This is because we, as a society, do not value them as highly as they should be valued.

No, it's because corporate entities have been allowed to monopolize the means of distribution. If you want your song promoted and released worldwide, you have to sign over your rights to the song to a big record label. Oh sure, the Internet is another possible channel now; but only a (small?) percentage of the total audience use it even now, and artists are reluctant to go it alone and handle distribution themselves rather than leaving it all to the big labels (who offer them fat checks up front and like Don Corleone say "I take care of everything"). How many artists are today pulling down good money from doing distribution themselves? I bet it's a handful, almost negligible in comparison to the traditional label-driven industry.

So we're a long way from being able to have the creator-owned paradise you envision. First we have to get corporate media out of the perpetual ownership business. Prof. Lessig is NOT suggesting we abolish copyright. His simple idea is to restrict the duration of copyright to a reasonable time. What could be wrong with that? Corporations still get to own and extort whatever profits they want for the time allotted (so do go-it-alone creators); and I doubt we'll stop buying music or going to the movies just because we can get them for free after 50 years or so. After that, scholars and artists get free access to the works so they can make compilations or remakes or whatever they desire.

It appears you've gotten some bad information from somewhere and it's confused you.

Rob, I'd repeat what I've said many times before (that yes, CC is all about subverting corporate controlled media and yes, Lessig is behind that) but I think people are getting tired of reading the same thing over and over again.

Lessig is right about CC. He's right about GPL. These are fundamentally important extensions of copyright. By touting them, he's making copyright much much more flexible and power and therefore the power of the creatore much more powerful.

So why is he shooting himself in the foot by attacking copyright itself?

Anyhow.. the lynch mob is getting restless so I should probably shut up about now before the flames being.

To blaze,

As what other said, I think that you have the wrong
information about Professor Lessig's position on
copyright. Unlike you, he is concerned with both
sides of the balance: authors and users. If more
power is given to one side of the balance, the other
side of balance will have less power. This is why
DRM is not well received by the users because it
gives the authors and artists too much power over
the uses of their works to the point that the users
could not use their works in any meaningful ways.

You have strange notion of communism. Just because
a person wants to moderate the power of copyright does
not mean that he is communist for he does not seek
to abolish the ownership in the works. Professor
Lessig made a very strong statement about his belief
in property rights. It is possible you have the wrong
information about him.

I don't agree with your position about the problems
caused by the middlemen. It is still the responsibility
of the authors and artists. If they mismange their
property rights as given by copyright or if they are
careless about their property rights or if they are
just plainly stupid in using the property rights, that
is their responsibility. Blaming the middlemen for
all the evils that befall on the world is like blaming
the English language for all the vulgar words that
are spoken by the speakers. I bet that you do not know
that authors and artists can terminate their grants
to publishers or anyone or any entity during the
five-year period after 35 years.

You have wrong idea about GPL and CC. They do not
exist solely because of copyright but because of
contract law. These licenses are the agreements
between two parties and the agreements are governed
by the contract law. GPL goes beyond the scope of
copyright law by adding more conditions to it through
the contract.

Authors and artists have enormous power as given by
copyright. They can even expand the power through
contracts (just look at some licenses that restrict
fair use). You can even have infinite term of
protection through contracts. What more do you want?

I gather from your posts that you really want to
concentrate all power into the authors and artists
with no regard for the users. There is a word for
it. It is called "domineering". I do not need to
explain the consequences if the authors and artists
choose to become more domineering through DRM, longer
term, and other means. Professor Lessig thinks that
this is bad especially for longer duration and
apparently you think that this is good.

Your affirmative response to my statement about the
myth of creator shows how arrogant you are. It is
one of the reasons why I no longer hold authors and
artists in high regard.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo@voicenet.com>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
comment in the public domain.