MetaFilter posts tagged with Copyright and Lessig

"As knowledge policy, for the creators of this knowledge, this is crazy"

unknowncommand — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:54:03 -0800

"The Architecture of Access to Scientific Information: Just How Badly We Have Messed This Up" Lawrence Lessig speaking at CERN on April 18, 2011. Long (~50 min), but wonderful and totally worth it (and the second half is about Youtube and remix culture).

Free Congress

gsteff — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:34:56 -0800

In trademark style, Lawrence Lessig today announced the creation of a congressional exploratory committee. If in the next few days he decides to officially enter the race, he'll be running in the special election on April 8th to fill the CA-12 seat recently vacated by the death of Tom Lantos. A run by Lessig would likely be seen as a new front the the technocratic, post-partisan movement Barack Obama is attempting to catalyze; Lessig was a colleague of Obama at the University of Chicago law school, helped to draft Obama's technology plan, and is describing his potential run (his first attempt at public office), and the larger Change Congress project he also announced today, as an attempt to save Congress as an institution from the corrupting influence of money. Lessig would be an untraditional democratic candidate; he began his law career clerking for Justice Scalia, and gained celebrity fighting against Hollywood and the RIAA for shorter copyright terms and expanded fair use. This move comes only months after Lessig moved on from that work to focus on political corruption, saying at the time

I have come to believe that until a more fundamental problem is fixed, [the free culture movement] can't succeed either. Compare: Imagine someone devoted to free culture coming to believe that until free software supports free culture, free culture can't succeed. So he devotes himself to building software. I am someone who believes that a free society -- free of the "corruption" that defines our current society -- is necessary for free culture, and much more. For that reason, I turn my energy elsewhere for now.

This announcement comes after a week of efforts to draft Lessig into the race on Facebook, MySpace and elsewhere.

Yahoo Search for Creative Commons Content

o2b — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 11:00:59 -0800

Yahoo Releases a beta tool that searches for Creative Commons content. It even allows you to specify the type of license you're interested in (derivitive works, commercial use). Lawrence Lessig obviously has something to say about it. If nothing else, it will increase awareness of the cause.

How I Lost the Big One

ericost — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 00:53:18 -0800

How I Lost the Big One Lawrence Lessig on losing Eldred v. Ashcroft: "We had in our Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would have made them see differently."

Supreme Court Rules Against Eldred

Songdog — Wed, 15 Jan 2003 08:05:53 -0800

The Supreme Court has ruled, seven to two, that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 is not unconstitutional. The act automatically extended copyright by an additional 20 years, delaying by those two decades the entry of works into the public domain. Lawrence Lessig and others have argued that the Act places unreasonable and unnecessary bounds on the potential of the Internet, as well as effectively rendering unobtainable many works from the early decades of the twentieth century.

Free Culture

waxpancake — Mon, 12 Aug 2002 15:34:46 -0800

Free Culture (8Mb flash). Lawrence Lessig's keynote speech at this year's OSCON conference is a stirring and effective explanation of how the entertainment industry, with the help of lawmakers, have undermined our fundamental right to create. Lessig asks, what have you personally done to stop them? This 30 minute long flash slideshow (mirror), compiled by Leonard Lin, tells you what happened and what you can do.