Larry Lessig Defends Pirates
Stanford law professor Larry Lessig had an editorial in the Wall Street Journal's weekend edition, "In defense of piracy." Lessig starts off hating on the lawyers who went after the mother in the dancing baby/YouTube/Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" case. (Background here.)
How is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there's some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music?
The answer: Crazy copyright law.
Lessig goes on to defend others whose creativity is derived from others' creativity, like Danger Mouse and mash-up artist Girl Talk, whose latest album samples from 300 different songs. No rights acquired.
Midway through, the editorial goes into "Braveheart" mode. There's a war going on, says Lessig-- the "copyright wars." Kids these days are sharing copyrighted material through peer-to-peer networks, while the art world is embracing a rampant remix culture.
This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can't kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea.That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison.
That's heavy. Lessig's suggestions for ending the war, saving our lawless kids, and encouraging creativity, after the jump.
To save copyright law.. and the rule of law... and our children, Lessig suggests five steps:
1. Deregulate amateur remix. Lessig says if you're not turning a profit, you're okay by him.
2. Deregulate "the copy". The law should focus on "uses -- like public distributions of copyrighted work -- that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster."
3. Simplify. Copyright law is complicated. Fix that, please.
4. Restore efficiency. Require that "domestic copyright owners maintain their copyright after an automatic, 14-year initial term."
5. Decriminalize Gen-X. Lessig calls for an end to lawsuits filed against college kids.
More love, less lawsuits, and simplify, simplify, simplify. Will this solve all those pesky copyright problems?
In Defense of Piracy [Wall Street Journal]
The Home Video Prince Doesn't Want You to See [ABC News]
(29) Comments
first motherfuckers
I thought GIrl Talk got fair use
china = lots of piracy little creativity
Decriminalize Gen-X?! The lawyers bringing these claims are likely Gen-X.
What, no photo of Johnny Depp?
Girl Talk claims fair use, and no one has challenged him. You can buy his album(s) on legitimate download sites like emusic. The decision in Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films suggests that almost all of his samples would be found to infringe - but none of the music companies have sued him, likely for publicity reasons. I'm sure one of them will get around to it eventually.
Gentlemen at the legal preparatory academy with which I was once affiliated frequently departed the aforementioned legal preparatory academy, electing instead to set out upon the high seas, despite the failure of those gentlemen to obtain letters of marque, making them, in common parlance, "pirates." Indeed, my own predecessor occupying this meme, himself an accomplished practioner of the obfuscatory arts, embarked on his own voyage of a similar nature, before contracting a loathsome disease. Nonetheless, the creativity of the gentlemen -- indeed, the very dancing stars of their souls -- was otherwise repressed, thus necessitating the need to resort to such piracy, the aim of which was not to obtain the filthy lucre of commerce, or at least containers of cheap plastic goods shipped FOB from certain Chinese treaty ports, but rather to free their minds, and the product of the same, from the ruthless constraints of the quaint notation that the product of oneself's own mind belonged to them, rather than the consuming public at large. Such capitalistic ideals bore no fruit in the ideas of the swashbucking buccaneer gentlemen of the aforementioned legal prepatory academy, and they girded themselves to battle the establishment by misappropriating snippets of the lousy work of certain self-proclaimed artists, and pasting them together to create other lousy works of self-proclaimed pirate artists. While these activities may have been viewed by some as gauche, in the totality of the cirumstances, most viewed the situation with only a modicum of disopprobium and concluded, in the vernacular, that it "wasn't a big deal."
wtf - worthless post
Is Lessig retarded? The youngest Gen-Xers are, what, 29?
now THAT is how first is done.
Lessig is right. Discuss.
Ellie
HOW IS THERE NOT A WHOLE POST ON THE TREASURY DEAL??
IT IS THE BIGGEST LAW FIRM LOTTERY EVER...
BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR STB(are they made until the bailout is over).
WHY DID FIRMS NOT APPLY?
Lat knew what we wanted and gave it to us.
Lessig is always right. Discuss!
I thought, from the headline, Lessig was going to defend those pirates that snagged the Ukranian weapons ship off the coast of Somalia. That would be a challenging case to make.
7 - I bet you spent more minutes composing that post than there will be people that actually read it.
The mother is using the record company.
Lessig is being disingenious, intentionally for shock value. No record company threatened the mother of a baby boy. The record company did not sue the mother or her baby. The company just sent a takedown notice to Youtube, and Youtube complied. A few months later, the record company relented and the user put the video back up.
Again: the mother is suing the record company. If she didn't this would be over and forgotten.
laid off lawyer
endofesq.com = what ATL used to be
@12 - we all know Elie is not capable of such a story. That's a job for Lat, who is speaking this afternoon at UVA and probably can't be researching a post.
damn - that should say "the mother is suing the record company," not using. That's a typo, not a judgment call.
laid off lawyer
17 - stfu. stop shilling your crappy site. it is just a bunch of fist-waiving without the bite and sarcastic wit that ATL used to have.
Ellie
HOW IS THERE NOT A POST ON THE LEGAL FRATERNITY LOTHARIO?
Lat knew what we wanted and gave it to us.
MysTTTal
and that's the problem with pirates. they steal, and then lawyer up. almost as bad as vikings.
ninjas would never stoop to such levels.
Oy veh.
Lessig is entirely right.
Lessig is kinda right, unless he really thinks today's college kids are "Gen X." In which case, he's less right than 20, above, who's totally fuckin' right.
Other than the "Gen X" dorkiness, Lessig's five-point plan has a lot to chew on. Or we could all hate on Elie and compose 500-word thesaurus masturbation exercises that begin, "At my preparatory academy in days of yore ..."
Who cares, guy in the image is hot
Employees at the patent office used to violate copyright all the time.... they only cared about patents, not stupid copyrights!
If you see Lessig's blog, he makes it very clear that he does not consider this essay a "defense" of piracy! He doesn't defend piracy, he says that the recording industry's conception of "piracy" is ridiculous.
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/10/news_flash_i_dont_defend_pirac.html