Copyleft guru Lawrence Lessig was on “The Colbert Report” last night to talk about the excesses of today’s copyright regime and a possible future where “hybrid” economies will leverage the best of open-source and sharing culture while remaining profitable for rights holders. Lessig is at his most effective when he compares current copyright battles — such as a mom being sued over a hommade clip of her toddler dancing to a barely-audible Prince ditty — to the equally useless War on Drugs. Score one for the professor.
It’s all in Lessig’s new book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, which I found highly compelling but ultimately frustrating. Although Lessig’s analysis of the failings of America’s copyright system are valid, his solutions leave you with more questions than answers. Perhaps he wants to inspire others to build on his theories, in effect “crowdsourcing” the entire debate. Or maybe it’s intellectual laziness. Or something else entirely.
Lessig was pretty cranky on last night’s show, but he did manage to get in a few zingers. Actually, the entire segment can be seen as a microcosm of the tensions between the culture-jammers who are redefining our digital lives and the old-guard content producers whose long-running businesses were built on the concept of scarcity. Plus it’s funny!
That’s all fine and good, but you can’t just say “deregulate amateur creativity; clear title; simplify the copyright code; decriminalize the non-commercial copy; legalize filesharing” without providing at least a HINT of how any of that would work in the real world.
I’m personally an advocate for voluntary blanket licenses for P2P. Yet there are MANY concerns, namely, would it set a single price for all digital music? Would it cover all artists, or just those on major record labels? Is this done through ad subsidies or an ISP surcharge? What happens when the rest of the content industry comes calling? A small fee could become exorbitant rather quickly.
As far as the copyright registry goes – nice idea, but it would throw overseas royalties out of whack – America collects foreign monies because of an international treaty that requires our avoidance of copyright registration.
I could go on and on. Lessig has brilliantly highlighted many of the problems, and CC is a great legacy. But it looks like the hard work of determining the scope of his proposed “hybrids” will once again be left to the lawyers and lobbyists.
[...] publisher didn’t read the section on “the sharing economy.” Check this earlier post to watch the professor go toe-to-toe with Stephen Colbert. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Penguin [...]
Lessig is my copilot.