Lawrence Lessig - Free Culture

Lessig is a lawyer specialising in copyright law and notable for his libertarian stance on such issues. In free culture, he goes into great detail to explain the history of copyright law and how we can learn from the lessons of the past. More importantly for this project, he looks at how technology is changing and the gap between what consumers are doing and what corporations think they should be doing. I've taken a lot of information from this, and a lot of notes which I'll post here for convenience.

Stallman - Free software, Free Society

"A free culture is not a culture without property, it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom."

Justice Douglas - "common sense revolts at the idea"

Armstrong FM radio

Most, if they recognised this change, would reject it. Yet most don't even see the change that the internet has introduced.

For the first time in our tradition, the ordinary ways in which individuals create and share culture fall within the reach of the law.

Free culture vs permission culture

I don't believe in gods, digital or otherwise

"if value, then right"
NYU law professor Rochelle Drey fuss

...The distinction between republishing someone's work on the one hand and building upon or transforming the work on the other. Copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern; copyright law today regulates both.

Richard Florida - "Rise of the creative class" + regulation of the creative class

"Disney's great genius, his spark of creativity, was built upon the work of others."

Rip, mix and burn

The average term of copyright used to be 30 years

Public Domain

Doujiushi -> committees that review Doujiushi reject any comic that is merely a copy

If Disney animators had stole a set of pencils to draw Steamboat Willie, we'd have no hesitation in condemning that taking as wrong.

"Walt Diney creativity"

"Excuse me Albert Einstein, but may I have permission to use your theory of relativity to show that you were wrong about quantum physics" - permission culture

Photography - image rights
Media literacy

One learns to write with images by making them and reflecting upon what one has created

Blogs - reasoned discourse - Asynchronous debate - No financial conflict of interest

Open source software FS/OSS

Ed Fellen of Princeton -> The "right to tinker"

For the first 100 years, America did not honour foreign copyrights (yet they persecute developing nations for doing the same)

If every download was a lost sale...then the industry would have suffered a 100% drop in sales last year, not 7.6%

Disney and universal shut down Sony's Betamax as it had the potential to copyright content.

Tapeworms - Valenti

Thomas Jefferson - "He who recieves an idea from me...

The publisherss...had as much concern for authors as a cattle rancher has for cattle

Public Domain born 1774
Fair use

"Cut and paste" culture

12:58
Tue 17 July

In the first 10 years of America:
14 year term if registered before becoming public domain. If the author was alive, they could renew this at the end for another 14.

Only 5% of works were actually registered under the federal copyright regime. Hence 95% immediately went into the public domain. 1790-1800

Today, most books fall out of print within a year and then used books are traded outside copyright regulation

In the first 100 years of the Republic, the term of C was changed once. In 1831, the term increaed from 28 to 42 by making the initial term 28 instead of 14. Then in 1909, the renewal term jumped to 28 years, totalling 56 years max

Starting 1962, congress extended the terms 11 times + twice extended the future C terms

In 1998, the "Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act" expanded terms by 20 years. In the 12 years after this, 1m patents will become public but 0 copyrights will. All works after 1978 (now before this also) only serve the max term.
Life + 50 years for authors
75 years for corporations

After the SB Act the term became 95 years
From 1973-2003 the average term jumped from 32.3 years to 95 as a result

C exists even if you don't mark your work copyright and if you don't pass available copies

Due to the nature of a digital network, every use can be considered another copy. This means ebooks are treated differently. If the C owner says you can only read it once a month this would be legally acceptable.

"Unregulated uses were an important part of free culture before the internet".

Copyrigt code

DMCA regulated devices that were designed to circumvent copyright protection.

Aibohack -"fair use" cannot be a defense to the DMCA

"The question is not whether the use of the copyright material was a copyright violation. The question was whether a copyright protection system was circumvented."

Cartoon 1981 - Paul Conrad

Guns can be used for good or bad -> copyright circumvention kills nobody

Technology can erase fair use

Code becomes law // Rules are built into tech, violating these rules is also breaking the law.