DOCSLIB.ORG

Free Culture Is Licensed Under a Creative Commons License

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Free Culture Is Licensed Under a Creative Commons License This PDF version of Free Culture is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This license permits non-commercial use of this work, so long as attribution is given. For more information about the license, click the icon above, or visit <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/>. -- Buy a copy of this book: click here 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 S32 FREE CULTURE R33 ❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ALSO BY LAWRENCE LESSIG 28 29 The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons 30 in a Connected World 31 S32 Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace R33 ❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page iv 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 THE PENGUIN PRESS 30 NEW YORK 31 2004 32S 33R ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘ ❘❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page v 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 FREE CULTURE 25 HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE 26 HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND 27 LAWTHE TOLAW LOCKTO LOCK DOWN DOWN CULTURECULTURE AND CONTROL 28 CREATIVITYAND CONTROL CREATIVITY 29 30 LAWRENCE LESSIG 31 S32 R33 ❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page vi 1 2 T HE P ENGUIN P RESS 3 a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 4 375 Hudson Street 5 New York, New York 10014 6 Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2004 7 All rights reserved 8 Excerpt from an editorial titled “The Coming of Copyright Perpetuity,” 9 The New York Times, January 16, 2003. Copyright © 2003 by The New York Times Co. 10 Reprinted with permission. Cartoon by Paul Conrad on page 159. Copyright Tribune Media Services, Inc. 11 All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. 12 Diagram on page 164 courtesy of the office of FCC Commissioner, Michael J. Copps. 13 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 14 Lessig, Lawrence. 15 Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law to lock down 16 culture and control creativity / Lawrence Lessig. p. cm. 17 Includes index. 18 ISBN 1-59420-006-8 (hardcover) 19 1. Intellectual property—United States. 2. Mass media—United States. 3. Technological innovations—United States. 4. Art—United States. I. Title. 20 21 KF2979.L47 2004 343.7309'9—dc22 2003063276 22 23 This book is printed on acid-free paper. 24 Printed in the United States of America 25 13579108642 26 Designed by Marysarah Quinn 27 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may 28 be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or 29 by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. 30 31 The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other 32S means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please pur- chase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic 33R piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page vii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 To Eric Eldred—whose work first drew me 15 to this cause, and for whom 16 it continues still. Co17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 S32 R33 ❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page ix (to navigate this PDF, use the bookmark bar) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 CONTENTS 12 13 14 15 In16 17 PREFACE xiii 18 INTRODUCTION 1 19 20 “PIRACY” 15 21 CHAPTER ONE: Creators 21 22 CHAPTER TWO: “Mere Copyists” 31 23 CHAPTER THREE: Catalogs 48 24 CHAPTER FOUR: “Pirates” 53 25 Film 53 26 Recorded Music 55 27 Radio 58 28 Cable TV 59 29 CHAPTER FIVE: “Piracy” 62 30 Piracy I 63 31 Piracy II 66 S32 R33 ❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘<http://free-culture.org/get-it> ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page x 1 “PROPERTY” 81 2 CHAPTER SIX: Founders 85 3 CHAPTER SEVEN: Recorders 95 4 CHAPTER EIGHT: Transformers 100 5 CHAPTER NINE: Collectors 108 6 CHAPTER TEN: “Property” 116 7 Why Hollywood Is Right 124 8 Beginnings 130 9 Law: Duration 133 10 Law: Scope 136 11 Law and Architecture: Reach 139 12 Architecture and Law: Force 147 13 Market: Concentration 161 14 Together 168 15 16 PUZZLES 175 17 CHAPTER ELEVEN: Chimera 177 18 CHAPTER TWELVE: Harms 183 19 Constraining Creators 184 20 Constraining Innovators 188 21 Corrupting Citizens 199 22 23 BALANCES 209 24 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Eldred 213 25 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Eldred II 248 26 27 CONCLUSION 257 28 29 AFTERWORD 273 30 Us, Now 276 31 Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: 32S Examples 277 33R Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea 282 ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘ ❘❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page xi Them, Soon 287 1 1. More Formalities 287 2 Registration and Renewal 289 3 Marking 290 4 2. Shorter Terms 292 5 3. Free Use Vs. Fair Use 294 6 4. Liberate the Music—Again 296 7 5. Fire Lots of Lawyers 304 8 9 NOTES 307 10 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 331 11 INDEX 333 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 S32 R33 ❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙ ❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚❘❘❘❙❚❘❙❚ ❙❚❘❙❚❘❙❚ 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page xiii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 PREFACE 12 13 14 15 At the end of his review of my first book, Code: And Other Laws of In16 Cyberspace, David Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless 17 technical and computer-related texts, wrote this: 18 19 Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It 20 doesn’t affect people who aren’t online (and only a tiny minority 21 of the world population is). And if you don’t like the Internet’s 22 system, you can always flip off the modem.1 23 24 Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book—that soft- 25 ware, or “code,” functioned as a kind of law—and his review suggested 26 the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could always 27 “drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome”-like simply flip a switch and be back 28 home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any troubles 29 that exist in that space wouldn’t “affect” us anymore. 30 Pogue might have been right in 1999—I’m skeptical, but maybe. 31 But even if he was right then, the point is not right now: Free Culture S32 is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the modem is turned R33 xiii <http://free-culture.org/get-it> 4TH PASS PAGES 14773_00_i-xviii_r9jm.qxd 2/10/04 3:46 PM Page xiv 1 off. It is an argument about how the battles that now rage regarding life 2 on-line have fundamentally affected “people who aren’t online.” There 3 is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet’s effect. 4 But unlike Code, the argument here is not much about the Internet 5 itself. It is instead about the consequence of the Internet to a part of 6 our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for 7 a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important. 8 That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the 9 pages that follow, we come from a tradition of “free culture”—not 10 “free” as in “free beer” (to borrow a phrase from the founder of the free- 11 software movement 2), but “free” as in “free speech,” “free markets,” “free 12 trade,” “free enterprise,” “free will,” and “free elections.” A free culture 13 supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by 14 granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limit- 15 ing the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and 16 innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free 17 culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a 18 market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a 19 “permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only 20 with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past. 21 If we understood this change, I believe we would resist it. Not “we” 22 on the Left or “you” on the Right, but we who have no stake in the 23 particular industries of culture that defined the twentieth century.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title A Web of Extended Metaphors in the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto of Aaron Swartz Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6w76f8x7 Author Swift, Kathy Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara A Web of Extended Metaphors in the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto of Aaron Swartz A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Education by Kathleen Anne Swift Committee in charge: Professor Richard Duran, Chair Professor Diana Arya Professor William Robinson September 2017 The dissertation of Kathleen Anne Swift is approved. ................................................................................................................................ Diana Arya ................................................................................................................................ William Robinson ................................................................................................................................ Richard Duran, Committee Chair June 2017 A Web of Extended Metaphors in the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto of Aaron Swartz Copyright © 2017 by Kathleen Anne Swift iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee for their advice and patience as I worked on gathering and analyzing the copious amounts of research necessary to
    [Show full text]
  • IP4D – Sustainable Production of and Fair Trade in Creative Expressions
    IP4D – Sustainable Production of and Fair Trade in Creative Expressions Dr. Volker Grassmuck, Ph.D. contribution to the Research Workshop on Free Culture Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Cambridge, MA, 23 October 2009 The point is not giving more to the poor but stealing less from them. (Jean Ziegler) The digital revolution provides great opportunities for free culture, i.e. cultural expressions that are free to circulate and build on. In this brief text I want to highlight three points: the overall idea of a Social Contract as well as the Culture Flat-Rate and a system of Fair Trade in creative expressions as two of its components. The guiding question is: How can a global Social Contract between creatives and society be established that ensures the freedom of culture and the sustenance of those who create it? A new Social Contract Under conditions of the digital age a new Social Contract between creatives and audiences (Grassmuck, 2008b, 2009) has to be negotiated, a new arrangement for the reciprocal „creative contributions“ by authors and by society (Aigrain 2008). The current debate on culture is focussed on property rights and their enforcement. The Social Contract is intended to refocus the debate on the issues behind the existing legal rules. The shift from the analogue to the digital knowledge order calls into question the boundaries between private and public, professional and non-professional, commercial and non-commercial. These are fundamental issues that should not be decided by case law but discussed in a broad inclusive debate by all of society based on empiric data and research.
    [Show full text]
  • The United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement and the Copyright Term Extension
    A SUBMISSION TO THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED STATES THE UNITED STATES-AUSTRALIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT AND THE COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION DR MATTHEW RIMMER LECTURER FACULTY OF LAW THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Faculty Of Law, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200 Work Telephone Number: (02) 61254164 E-Mail Address: [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 3 Executive Summary 4 Part 1 An Act For The Encouragement of Learning 8 Part 2 Free Mickey: The Copyright Term and The Public Domain 12 Part 3 A Gift To IP Producers: The Copyright Term and Competition Policy 27 Part 4 Emerging Standards: The Copyright Term and International Trade 36 Part 5 Robbery Under Arms: The Copyright Term And Cultural Heritage 43 Conclusion 58 Appendix 1: Comparison Of Copyright Duration: United States, European Union, and Australia 62 2 "There is a whole constituency out there with a strong view against copyright term extension and we are arguing that case." Mark Vaile, Minister for Trade (December 2003) "Extending our copyright term by 20 years doesn’t really protect our authors, yet it still taxes our readers." Professor Andrew Christie, Director, Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, the University of Melbourne "Perpetual Copyright On An Instalment Plan" Professor Peter Jaszi, Washington University "A Piracy Of The Public Domain" Professor Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University "A Gift To Intellectual Property Producers" Henry Ergas "Intellectual Purgatory" Justice Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court of the United States "A No-Brainer" Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics "Actually, Sonny [Bono] wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever." Mary Bono 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • The first modern copyright legislation - the Statute of Anne - was an "Act for the encouragement of learning".
    [Show full text]
  • ELDRED V. ASHCROFT: the CONSTITUTIONALITY of the COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT by Michaeljones
    COPYRIGHT ELDRED V. ASHCROFT: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT By MichaelJones On January 15, 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act ("CTEA"), which extended the term of copyright protection by twenty years.2 The decision has been ap- plauded by copyright protectionists who regard the extension as an effec- tive incentive to creators. In their view, it is a perfectly rational piece of legislation that reflects Congress's judgment as to the proper copyright term, balances the interests of copyright holders and users, and brings the3 United States into line with the European Union's copyright regime. However, the CTEA has been deplored by champions of a robust public domain, who see the extension as a giveaway to powerful conglomerates, which runs contrary to the public interest.4 Such activists see the CTEA as, in the words of Justice Stevens, a "gratuitous transfer of wealth" that will impoverish the public domain. 5 Consequently, Eldred, for those in agree- ment with Justice Stevens, is nothing less than the "Dred Scott case for 6 culture." The Court in Eldred rejected the petitioners' claims that (1) the CTEA did not pass constitutional muster under the Copyright Clause's "limited © 2004 Berkeley Technology Law Journal & Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. 1. Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 108, 203, 301-304 (2002). The Act's four provisions consider term extensions, transfer rights, a new in- fringement exception, and the division of fees, respectively; this Note deals only with the first provision, that of term extensions.
    [Show full text]
  • Remix My Lit M T: Creative Commons & Text
    remix my lit M T: Creative Commons & Text In defining ‘web 2.0,’ Tim O’Reilly espouses the remixing of multiple sources of information, text case studies including the personal, to create rich user experiences (http://radar.oreilly.com/ archives/2005/10/web-20-compact-definition. Aduki Press: Stick This In Your html). Memory Hole 141 Nowhere is user participation in the creation of The Age Blogs 144 meaning more lauded than in the blogosphere. Bloggers are recognised to be among the ANAT Filter 145 first groups truly to embrace the CC scheme, On Line Opinion 148 and remain some of its strongest proponents. As exemplars in this field, Human Resources A New Leaf Media: The Pundit 150 consultant Michael Specht and Malaysian free John Quiggin 152 culture advocate Aizat Faiz build their writings around the desire to foster open source and free Michael Specht 155 content. This advocacy is driven by the desire to cultivate new voices and alternative viewpoints, Mike Seyfang 156 challenging the enduring corporate dominance of Remix My Lit 159 mainstream media, as aided by CC. As blogger Robin Good puts it: Strange Symphonies blog 161 ‘Web 2.0 is turbo-charging our capacity to re-establish this vibrant, participatory, people- Nevertheless, as shown in these case studies, driven, creative culture. But we the use of CC licensing on blogs is not always nevertheless face greater threats uncontroversial. Prominent Australian economist than ever to our cultural liberties, John Quiggin sparked a debate on the value of as corporations in league with CC licences to blogging, when he introduced the legislators dream up new ways licensing on his eponymous blog johnquiggin.
    [Show full text]
  • THE FUTURE of IDEAS This Work Is Licensed Under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License (US/V3.0)
    less_0375505784_4p_fm_r1.qxd 9/21/01 13:49 Page i THE FUTURE OF IDEAS This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License (US/v3.0). Noncommercial uses are thus permitted without any further permission from the copyright owner. Permissions beyond the scope of this license are administered by Random House. Information on how to request permission may be found at: http://www.randomhouse.com/about/ permissions.html The book maybe downloaded in electronic form (freely) at: http://the-future-of-ideas.com For more permission about Creative Commons licenses, go to: http://creativecommons.org less_0375505784_4p_fm_r1.qxd 9/21/01 13:49 Page iii the future of ideas THE FATE OF THE COMMONS IN A CONNECTED WORLD /// Lawrence Lessig f RANDOM HOUSE New York less_0375505784_4p_fm_r1.qxd 9/21/01 13:49 Page iv Copyright © 2001 Lawrence Lessig All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Lessig, Lawrence. The future of ideas : the fate of the commons in a connected world / Lawrence Lessig. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-375-50578-4 1. Intellectual property. 2. Copyright and electronic data processing. 3. Internet—Law and legislation. 4. Information society. I. Title. K1401 .L47 2001 346.04'8'0285—dc21 2001031968 Random House website address: www.atrandom.com Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 24689753 First Edition Book design by Jo Anne Metsch less_0375505784_4p_fm_r1.qxd 9/21/01 13:49 Page v To Bettina, my teacher of the most important lesson.
    [Show full text]
  • Peer to Peer and the Music Industry: the Criminalization of Sharing
    Matthew David TC TC Peer to Peer and the Music Industry S S Have the music and movie industries lost the battle to Industry Music the and Peer to Peer criminalize downloading? Theory, Culture & Society Theory, This penetrating and informative book provides readers with a systematic guide to the file-sharing phenomenon. Critically combining inter-disciplinary resources Matthew David unpacks the economics, psychology and philosophy of file-sharing. The book carefully situates the reader in a field of relevant approaches including network society theory, post-structuralism and ethnographic research. It uses this to launch a fascinating enquiry into: • the rise of file-sharing, • the challenge to intellectual property law posed by new technologies, • the social psychology of cyber crime and • the response of the mass media and multi-national corporations. This is a landmark work in the sociology of popular culture and cultural criminology, it concludes with a balanced, eye-opening assessment of alternative cultural modes of participation and their relationship to cultural capitalism. It fuses a deep knowledge of the music industry and the new technologies of mass communication with a powerful perspective on how multinational corporations seek to monopolize markets, how international and state agencies defend property, while a global multitude undermine and/or reinvent both. It will be of interest to students of sociology, criminology, media and communications and cultural studies. ‘Matthew David has done a rare and valuable thing with this work. He has comprehensively exposed the inherent radicalism of peer-to-peer communication and exposed the absurdities of the various efforts to quash the practice and technologies.
    [Show full text]
  • The Digital Republic
    The Digital Republic From Barcelona, David Bollier outlines the struggle to secure and expand the commons By David Bollier Photo by isma.mov – moosaic.com via flickr.com under a Creative Commons license (attribution and non-commercial) These remarks were given by David Bollier at the Free Culture Forum [www.fcforum.net] in Barcelona, Spain, on October 30. This conference takes place at a time of great promise and great peril. Great promise, because we have the opportunity to secure what I call the Digital Republic. And great peril, because the 20th Century content industries show few signs of recognizing the legitimacy and value of the digital commons and its principles of openness, participation and decentralized control. So I thank the organizers of the Free Culture Forum for bringing us together to discuss the future of our Digital Republic. You may be wondering: What is this Digital Republic? It is the federation of self-organized commons that constitute free culture. It is the new vision of democratic practice that we have been creating for a generation. And who is this “we”? We are the hackers and programmers who have built and maintained GNU Linux, Apache, PERL, blogging software, wikis, social networking and wifi. We are the musicians and filmmakers who create works that speak to our time —serious, funny, eccentric — and move beyond the hyped, formulaic, lowest-common-denominator “product” that Hollywood and the big record labels keep churning out. We are artists who are fed up with corporate middlemen taking most of the money that our creativity earns. And so we are creating our own online platforms and own audiences — audiences whom we respect, and who respect us.
    [Show full text]
  • The Consequences of Framing Free Culture As a Social Movement Alek Tarkowski Creative Commons Poland / University of Warsaw
    The consequences of framing free culture as a social movement Alek Tarkowski Creative Commons Poland / University of Warsaw The phenomenon of free culture has not yet been properly defined in sociological terms, and the majority of research on free culture seems to be based in legal, media or information studies. From the viewpoint of sociology, free culture is an association, of some sort, of human and institutional actors, together with associated social and cultural practices. For lack of a better one, I will use here the term free cultural activism to describe my object of interest. I believe that this association should be more precisely defined as a social movement. This proposition is obvious and often stated by activists and practitioners, but to my knowledge has not been investigated by researchers of free culture. The phenomenon of free cultural activism has all the elements expected of a modern, global and networked, social movement (della Porta, Kriesi and Rucht 1999). It fits the description of a New Social Movement, in which a heterogeneous range of actors are tied together by a common identity, shared meanings or collective imaginary (Appadurai 1996). As is typical of such movements, the movement struggles in the name of broad cultural change rather than material stakes – fitting into the current shift towards postmateriality [Inglehart]. If we agree with Alain Tourraine that a social movement's struggle has as its goal the change of historicity, or society's „great cultural orientations” (Tourraine 1981) – then free cultural activism, focused upon key regulatory mechanisms and models of production in knowledge-based societies, should be seen as one of key social movements of today.
    [Show full text]
  • Steal This Review!
    Steal This Review! BY CHRISTOPHER KELTY* Adrian Johns. Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009. 626 pp. ISBN 978–0–226–40118-8. $35.00 (hardcover), $7.00 (e-book, 30-day ownership), $35.00 (e-book, perpetual ownership), Free (partial, Google Books), Free (complete, e.g., gigapedia.com). Lewis Hyde. Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. 306 pp. ISBN 978–0–374–22313–7. $26.00 (hard- cover), $12.99 (e-book). In 2001, Houghton-Mifflin—the hoary Boston publisher of Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne—printed a book called The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall. It is a minor novel of historicist experimentation, in which the story of Mar- garet Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is retold from the perspective of Scarlett O’Hara’s half-sister and slave, Cynara. I haven’t read the book, and I don’t know anyone who has. I do, however, know a large number of people who know the details of the copyright infringement case brought by the Mitchell Estate.1 That case became a cause célèbre among activists, lawyers, writers, and scholars as an example of the contemporary abuse of copyright law.2 Whatever emotions Randall’s book was designed to evoke—disgust at the pernicious lasting effects of slavery or sympathy with the minor character’s version of the story—these are not the emotions the legal case evokes. The case evokes concern and anger about something more abstract: the right to make use of existing works in order to create something new, different, critical, or creative.
    [Show full text]
  • ELDRED V. ASHCROFT: the CONSTITUTIONALITY of the COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT by Michaeljones
    COPYRIGHT ELDRED V. ASHCROFT: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION ACT By MichaelJones On January 15, 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act ("CTEA"), which extended the term of copyright protection by twenty years.2 The decision has been ap- plauded by copyright protectionists who regard the extension as an effec- tive incentive to creators. In their view, it is a perfectly rational piece of legislation that reflects Congress's judgment as to the proper copyright term, balances the interests of copyright holders and users, and brings the3 United States into line with the European Union's copyright regime. However, the CTEA has been deplored by champions of a robust public domain, who see the extension as a giveaway to powerful conglomerates, which runs contrary to the public interest.4 Such activists see the CTEA as, in the words of Justice Stevens, a "gratuitous transfer of wealth" that will impoverish the public domain. 5 Consequently, Eldred, for those in agree- ment with Justice Stevens, is nothing less than the "Dred Scott case for 6 culture." The Court in Eldred rejected the petitioners' claims that (1) the CTEA did not pass constitutional muster under the Copyright Clause's "limited © 2004 Berkeley Technology Law Journal & Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. 1. Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 108, 203, 301-304 (2002). The Act's four provisions consider term extensions, transfer rights, a new in- fringement exception, and the division of fees, respectively; this Note deals only with the first provision, that of term extensions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Free Jammie Movement: Is Making a File Available to Other Users Over a Peer-To-Peer Computer Network Sufficient to Infringe the Copyright Owner's 17 U.S.C
    Fordham Law Review Volume 78 Issue 2 Article 14 2009 The Free Jammie Movement: Is Making a File Available to Other Users Over a Peer-to-Peer Computer Network Sufficiento t Infringe the Copyright Owner's 17 U.S.C. § 106(3) Distribution Right? Ken Nicholds Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Ken Nicholds, The Free Jammie Movement: Is Making a File Available to Other Users Over a Peer-to-Peer Computer Network Sufficiento t Infringe the Copyright Owner's 17 U.S.C. § 106(3) Distribution Right?, 78 Fordham L. Rev. 983 (2009). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol78/iss2/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Free Jammie Movement: Is Making a File Available to Other Users Over a Peer-to-Peer Computer Network Sufficiento t Infringe the Copyright Owner's 17 U.S.C. § 106(3) Distribution Right? Cover Page Footnote Thank you to Jay, my inspirational son who was born during the process of writing this Note, and thank you to Ting, my inspirational wife who did not divorce me during the process of writing this note. This article is available in Fordham Law Review: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol78/iss2/14 THE FREE JAMMIE MOVEMENT: IS MAKING A FILE AVAILABLE TO OTHER USERS OVER A PEER-TO-PEER COMPUTER NETWORK SUFFICIENT TO INFRINGE THE COPYRIGHT OWNER'S 17 U.S.C.
    [Show full text]