May 14, 2008...1:57 pm
Creativity, Fair Use, and User Generated Content
Lawrence Lessig has an excellent TED video that describes what he sees as problems with the current copyright system and how it affects creativity and user generated content. His combination of the history of copyright, fair use, and problems associated with it do a good job at getting the viewer up to speed as well as making his point clearer.
I thought that this might be a pertinent video to embed because of the discussion on yesterday’s post and the Peanuts post as well. Obviously, he’s just one person, but he is a lawyer so that has to count for something. Plus, he’s one of the driving forces behind the Creative Commons movement. It’s worth quoting from their history page what the creative commons is about since a lot of what Lessig describes in this video is what is listed on that page:
Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.
Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”
I really enjoy listening to Lessig or reading what he has to say because I’m in his camp when it comes to copyright. His style of presenting is excellent. The way he uses just a few words to focus the attention of the viewer on those words is done in such a manner that it really gets across the point he is trying to make. Enjoy.
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