Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at
5:45 am
www.ted.com Larry Lessig, the Nets most celebrated lawyer, cites John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the “ASCAP cartel” in his argument for reviving our creative culture.TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes — including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ampicillin Online Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands …
We can all thank Disney for pressuring Congress to write a ridiculous copyright law. They wanted an extremely long Copyright period so that no one would steal Snow White from them.
Snow White is one of the worst movies I’ve ever been forced to watch. Really? Snow White? That’s why we have this ridiculous nature in copyright law?
The part of this statement that makes me nervous is the potential for government review or censorship. Negative externalities could mean texts of culture, music, or film that the government says are “bad”. It’d be a Freedom of Speech issue.
I’m assuming that the negative externalities you were speaking of were aimed at pollution and crime, but it could be aimed at art and culture as well.
I’ve started to address this with a blog, but the short answer is measurement. I believe we can measure damn near anything we can conceive of. It might take us a long time to measure the ludicrously abstract, but this is an area of expertise that scientists excel at. You might even say that measurement was a big part of inspiring science. If we want a fair world, shouldn’t we begin by quantifying exactly how, where, and why it is unfair now? That’s pretty much all I’m saying.
He seems to be an American and what bothers me is that they always call themselves a “Democracy”
It’s kind of annoying if you know the grade school definition. The US is obviously a republic, we are a Constitutional Republic.
We elect people to represent us but have(well…had) a constitution to guarantee rights.
The founding father hated the idea that 51% of a population would be able to rule over 49% with an iron fist.
Pet peeve. Spread the knowledge and maybe politicians will also someday know grade school words.
Although it’s rammed into peoples head since they are children, they should take that spelling test and go “Oi people are using the word wrong”
did youtube lower the quality of all their videos and added HQ as a ploy? cuz this is bullshit
It’s great to see someone with influence understand the sentiments of the younger generation. The governments, music and movie industries are blinded by fear and greed and are not using common sense and carrying about the end-user — their bread and butter.
I know it’s not the point, but to allow creative application of copyrighted material is usually more of an asset than a detriment in the first place: The reason I’ve bought most of the CDs that I own is because I heard it in the background of someone’s youtube video. How many times have you seen some video and half of the comments were, ‘what song were you playing?’. Recording artists and record companies are getting unprecedented exposure and laws that they don’t command are stifling it.
See, one important detail about a common ground between artists and the public: you can’t stop piracy. Unless you delete the whole internet. People are going to pirate it anyway. Better just make it legal: many people who listen to things online first end up buying the albums.
Oh Dear God I hate those anime remix things. The Jesus one was brilliant, though.
While I disagree with the idea that copyright should be abolish, it pains me that Lessig has just dismissed the people who think this without argument. He just waves his hand and labels them “extremist” without even considering their perfectly valid and reasonable points.
I think most people here agree that it is a serious shortcoming.
With a corporate owned media we also don’t have truth – which is essential to a democracy.
Copyright can be a good incentive for creativity, but as with all incentives, people may start to abuse it (see Barry Schwartz’s TEDTalk for more). We need copyright, but it can’t be something more than 40-50 years.
the man makes a good point
No system is ever perfect, so should the solution be up to the free market(people) or the State(courts)? Copyrights we do need them, though time always calls for change. We live in a information rich era, to negate this sharing or reinventing of idea is a crime against humanity.
The HQ thing only came out a few months ago. It is likely this video was uploaded before there was an option to upload your video as HQ. Some of the newer TEDTalks have HQ quality. Just not this oldie.
hes a prophet
This guys voice fluctuations are annoying as all hell. “It iiiiiissss (upward vocal pitch) the best wayyyyyy (upward vocal pitch) to maaaakkeee someethingggg (upward vocal pitch(stab me with a knife etc))”. It sucks cause I really like what he is saying but gdamn.
“In the digital world, every single use of culture produces a copy”. @ 13:31 What? The use of culture produces a copy, wtf that does not make sense, i’m not sure culture was the best word to use there, I get where he is going with it.
One thing that lessig (I know he’s no directly interested in this aspect) is the immense waste of time and energy currently dedicated to the prioritorial decemination of “culture”. When you think that we live in a world of increasing enviromental anxiety – what really is the point of shipping vast numbers of small plastic discs arround the world to make a profit when you could for much less cost ship them down the never ending wire that is the internet?
i dont think people should distribute pirated music for money they download it because they enjoy it
music made is based on what may be “cool.” Hence what the culture. It’s all about culture, what’s allowable and what’s not. It’s the perfect word.
Quite the opposite, the sharing of ideas is exponentially more likely to spark incentives.
Agreed. Copyright term seems to end up being however long it takes to keep Mickey Mouse’s copyright from expiring.
oh dear lord, the jesus christ i will survive video is the best thing ever made.