Lessig

Amazingly great CC news: Nine Inch Nails' latest album has been released under a Creative Commons license.

At the Stanford "Legal Futures" conference last weekend, I joined a panel with author Andrew Keen titled "The Future of Professional Media." I hadn't planned to be on a panel with Andrew, but the conference had a FOO structure, and when I left the night before, he was the only one on the panel. Being a good host, I signed up so he wouldn't be alone (smile...).

As I've written here before, I've always been unsure about whether Keen is a know-nothing, or the greatest self-parodist of our time. For while his book, The Cult of the Amateur, is a tirade against "amateur culture" -- ridiculing its sloppiness, errors, and lack of standards -- the book itself is riddled with sloppy, basic errors that betray either an oblivious author or a publisher without standards. And thus the self-parody: demonstrating "professional" media can be as bad as the bad of the "amateur" media.

People who knew Keen, however, told me my self-parody theory was bunk. That Keen wasn't a brilliant anything; that his book was simply sloppy. Yet his latest missive again makes me wonder -- are we all just missing the extraordinary comic genius in this failed Internet entrepreneur?

Here's the clue: My criticism of Keen's book Saturday tracked the criticism above. I read a series of quotes from the book to support my claim that the book was full of simple, basic errors. Among the passages I quoted was this:

In a twisted kind of Alice in Wonderland, down-the-rabbit-hole logic, Silicon Valley visionaries such as Stanford law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig and cyberpunk William Gibson laud the appropriation of intellectual property.

I asked Keen if he had ever read anything I had written. He said he had. I asked him to name one instance where I had ever "laud[ed] the appropriation of intellectual property." He sat silently. I pressed. He had no answer. He could name no instance of my "laud[ing] the appropriation of intellectual property" because that's not my schtick. Indeed, as I repeatedly insisted in Free Culture (see pages 10, 18, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 139, 255), what others call "piracy" I was emphatically not writing to defend. Indeed, I criticized it as "wrong."

Now whether mine is a sensible view or not, or a view consistent with the Free Culture Movement or not, is an argument had on this page many times. But the Keen-relevant point is that my claim was a claim about a fact. He alleges I "laud the appropriation of intellectual property." I claim I do not. That's a true/false claim. And so in the tradition of the professional truth-seeker, so threatened, Keen believes, by the wisdom-of-the-crowds Internet, one would think that the disagreement would be resolved by someone actually reading something, or at least providing some citation. No doubt it was unfair to call Keen out on stage. He didn't come with his notes. Why would I expect him to be able to identify anything in my work at all? But after the conference, perhaps. Maybe then Keen could defend the assertion that I flatly denied.

And indeed, he now has -- but the interesting (self-parody point) is how.

In a blog post, Keen again charges me with lauding the appropriation of intellectual property. But what's the source for his renewed charge? Did Keen go back to the books? Or back to his notes? Does he offer a quote, or a passage to exemplify this defining feature of my work?

No. The truth of this matter for Keen is resolved by asking a bunch of people at the conference whether in fact I "laud the appropriation of intellectual property." They said I did. And that resolves it for Keen.

That's right: the truth comes from the wisdom of the crowd. These unnamed sources confirm it for Keen. And that's all the confirmation he needs. No need to actually read anything. The crowds have spoken. And now this "professional" trusts the crowds.

I have no doubt that many believe I "laud the appropriation of intellectual property." That's in part because people like Keen say I do, and on balance because most people (sensibly) have better things to do than to struggle through the turgid prose of an academic.

But the relevant point here is this: any author who aspired to the high standards that Keen is so keen to laud would suss the truth of this matter the old fashioned way -- by reading a book (or two). Were Keen to do that, he'd see that most of the wry humor in his blog post misses the mark because I don't in fact hold the views that he holds me up to (I have nothing against professional media content; I love Hollywood movies; and I have never doubted the significance of professional media: my praise of amateurs is not a criticism of the professional). What his writing instead demonstrates is something only the most cynical would believe -- that the aim of this "professional" writer (and his publisher) has little to do with the truth, much more to do with selling books.

Good luck in that, Andrew.

The iCommons iSummit in iSopporo is accepting submissions for ideas for panels, etc.

On Thursday, March 20, at 1:30 pm, at an event at the Press Club in DC, I'll launch a beta of the Change Congress movement. If you can make the event, please RSVP (seats are filling fast). If you can't, the event will be webcast.

That Olbermann gets television time is the best evidence that free speech lives.

Moveon.org is running another ad contest. All ads will be CC licensed. I'm a judge. Here's the announcement:

And remember the winner of the last contest (Bush in 30 seconds):

You'll recall I wrote about Bill Foster just after I decided not to run for Congress. He won his special election, and is now serving in Congress. He is a real geek (as opposed to what I would have been/am -- a geek wanna-be), and he's already doing amazingly great work. No doubt the GOP will work hard to unseat him in the fall, so whatever support you can give, please do. He's the kind of CHANGE Congress needs.

Read about his first days here.

(Thanks, Richard!)

A favorite ccKorea photo, by ph1337 at Flickr

Just returning (actually, late for the plane) from ccKorea's "1st International Conference." The trip was an extraordinary rush of the happiest and saddest thoughts.

Happiest: to see how this local organization has grown. This conference was 100% locally funded and organized. There were hundreds who showed up to listen to talks about local CC artists, and talk about CC in education and in business. The key organizing of the event came from an army of CC volunteers -- ranging from high schoolers to professors in local universities. And the organization has been led and inspired by key members of the Korean bar, as well as a Korean judge. Korea is the perfect example of how CC can flourish on its own internationally. And it is rare that I get so inspired that I agree to go embarrass myself at karaoke, but that's in fact what the ccKorea team did (and no, there are no recordings).

Saddest: It finally hit me last night as Karaoke was winding down that I was in fact moving on from all this. I've spent much of the last 5 years flinging myself to over 40 countries to celebrate the launch of CC locally, and to other CC International events. My new work will mean I can't do this as much. My new focus is right for me, and for CC. But not having the chance to watch this kid grow as closely as I have so far is a big and sad loss.

Thank you, ccKorea, for making this sad recognition as happy as it could be. (And thank you for sparing the world a recording of the karaoke).

Over the years, I've sometimes come to this place to ask for tech help. I'm here again. I've had some fantastic support from wildly overworked sorts -- M. David most recently and most extensively. But I'm now in some desperate need for someone or some few who could commit some cycles to lessig.org development. I'm keen to clean up the mess that is the content on my site -- making my presentations more easily available, providing free format versions of everything I can, etc. That means the right sort would have experience with codecs and some design, and a taste for building systems that scale easily.

I can put together a small budget to support some of this, but not a ton. If you can help, drop a note here with your experience and a clear indication of the level of support you could offer.

There's also a video of the event at the Press Club on March 20, 2008, here.

I'm going to be speaking at an Obama rally at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater) on Saturday, March 29, at 5pm, in Huntsman Hall - 3730 Walnut Street (or 38th and Locust Streets).

Though I've made slideshows for Obama (first, second), I've never done this. If you're around, or have friends who are around, come!

My talk at UPenn about Barack. Download other formats at blip.tv.

I'll be giving a new version of the Change Congress talk at the Harvard Berkman Center Friday, April 4, at 5pm, and releasing the next stage of the site's development. Here's the announcement at the Berkman site.