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7.31.2008

Prohibition and Piracy

My wife had me listen to a short section of the "Re-Mix Culture" show from ttbook.org. In this section, Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons licensing, talks about the absurdity of copyright law as it currently stands.

He makes some excellent points. I'll point out just a couple, but you'll get more out of the talk if you download the file and listen to his section (near the middle).

1. By claiming that digital content sharing/creation is "piracy" we make ourselves (youth) criminals. This causes huge problems because we buy into that claim and gain a disregard for all law ...much like the days of prohibition.

2. We crush creativity when we tell not only children but also educators that they must not use pre-generated content for learning purposes.

He has a lot more to say, but I'll let him say it.

So, go grab the audio here, and pop forward to about the middle of the show.

~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor

2 comments :

James Nussbaum said...

Your blog was informative and inspirational to know that someone else shares the same types of feelings that I do about copywritten material and use of it in nonprofit and profit projects. I understand the logic but most of it is extreme and should be curbed.
Thank you for sharing your insight into some of these topics although I think you may not have described all of the freedoms FAIR USE offers an artist....We have some freedoms there....
Regards,
James Ford Nussbaum
GALILEO PRODUCTIONS, LLC
www.galileoproductions.com

Luke Holzmann said...

Thanks, James! I'm no lawyer, but what little I've read about Fair Use... there aren't that many freedoms there. And, personally, until copyright law becomes more sane, I stay away from that kind of thing.

~Luke