Some of the concerns ignored by these efforts are:
1. Creativity always builds on the past;
2. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it;
3. Free societies enable the future by limiting the past;
4. Ours is less & less a free society:
a. The shrinking of the commons;
Under the old copyright law, wherein a copyright could be renewed once, 85% of copyrights were not renewed. Nonetheless, Congress has removed the formalities of registered copyright and what is in the public domain. Thus, you cannot know what is in the public domain any longer.
b. The expanding of copyright;
Copyright was originally only in relation to republishing and vending and did not cover derivative works, including translations. Now it covers these and much more. (E.g., the AIBO case, above.)
c. The explosion of technologies to control use;
The prime example given by the speaker is the ebook. Looking at his own book, the reader is allowed to copy a given (but short) length of material. However, on a copy of Aristotle, NO COPYING was allowed at all! This illustrates how technology is replacing law as the means of control of material, thus giving publishers far greater power than even the recent changes in copyright law have enabled.
Among publishers, any copying is regarded as, "It's just theft" which leads to the statement that "Librarians are relics from an era where theft was permintted." In the past, law was fitted to the technology; today, we are fitting technology to 19th century law. Thus the dinosaurs are controlling evolution.
It is critical that we reframe the debate, and thus the concept of "creative commons" relies on these precepts:
Creativity builds on the past;
Creativity depends on balalnce;
It must be a BALANCE of control and common property.
This idea was first proposed by L. Ray Patterson in 1968 in the book, Copyright in Historical Perspective. This is more than a debate about property among legal specialists, said this professor of law. It is a debate about the core values of freedom. It needs the voices of everyone. "That's you," he told his audience.
(At the end of the lecture, Dr. Lessig presented the first L. Ray Patterson Award to L. Ray Patterson.)
(Quotes from this session are in American Libraries, August, 2002, pp. 76,78.)
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