MetaFilter posts tagged with FreeCulture

Ship ahoy, Captain!

jaduncan — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:40:42 -0800

You've heard of the Swedish Pirate Party. You may have seen their their elected MEP, and their 50,000 members. You may even have heard of the German Pirate Party's thousand members. But now the Open Rights Group does not stand alone in the UK's digital rights movement. On June 30th, the British Pirate Party was registered. Press reaction is here. The initial policies: • Reform copyright and patent law. We want to legalise non-commercial file sharing and reduce the excessive length of copyright protection, while ensuring that when creative works are sold, it's the artists who benefit, not monopoly rights holders. We want a patent system that doesn't stifle innovation or make life saving drugs so expensive that patients die. • End the excessive surveillance, profiling, tracking and monitoring of innocent people by Government and big businesses. • Ensure that everyone has real freedom of speech and real freedom to enjoy and participate in our shared culture. Shared policy discussion currently takes place on the wiki (and the Copyright Policy Working Group may be of particular interest). Twitter | Facebook Group | Forums

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.

Hear Free Culture

majcher — Sat, 27 Mar 2004 13:01:33 -0800

A free, blogger-read version of Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture is being produced. The book is released under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial derivative works to be created from it. (Some chapters are already available.) This is great - I think it would be a fine thing if more people produced audio versions of open-licensed or public domain works in this manner. (From boingboing)

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."

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.