Free Culture

Earlier today (or perhaps yesterday) I started reading Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. I first heard about it in the comic xkcd, and finally decided to take a look at it.

There are "no words in the vernacular can describe" how great of a book it is.
Now I'm bad at summarizing, only exacerbated by the fact that I have yet to finish this novel, yet I'll try my best to give a general idea of what this book is about;

Essentially the novel (so far as I've read it) is a critical examination of copyright law, in the context of modern society. Lessig basically begins with an overview of our society's culture (with regards to media) and takes us the reader through history through many fundamental times in history where the actions of government and copyright worked to come up with a way to preserve authors rights to their work, while at the same time not stifling future creativity and growth. Throughout history there have been many monumental discoveries and inventions that from their inception have changed and shaped the world we live in. From Radio, to Film, to television and now to the internet, each time there was, what I feel can only be properly called a paradigm shift in the way intelectual property has been handled, and rights afforded to individuals over this property.

Through many kinds of tecnological advances, copyright has changed whether it be from the advent of photography as mainstream which could very well have gone an entirely different way had the judges of the time decided that one needed permission before they would be allowed to photograph any particular thing, the same kind of thing went with the phonograph (used for recording music) radio, and cable tv, vcrs.

A bitter gem of irony found in Lessig's work is that many of the established industries today (record, movie, and tv industires) were in fact established by "piracy" (I'll leave you to find out the details in the book) In much the same way that the internet is now changing the way information is spread and content created, those inventions had shaped their times and with them brought massive (or miniscule) changes to copyright laws, and the rights of authors

Now Lessig doesn't advocate piracy (and neither do I), at least not in it's literal sense, as stealing the work of another without compensation or credit, nor does he advocate the idea of authors not being granted compensation for their work, or rights over their work. Lessig, points out many of the flaws in today's system, that allow large corporations to misue today's laws to essentially stifle the creative flow of authors over the internet, like many companies abuse of the DMCA to exert their will over content on the internet which they should not have control over [related articles here, here and.... here]

There is far to much in Lessig's book, for me to just state in one blog post, or even several, but I definitely feel that this book is one that definitely should be read, especially by those like myself who have come to rely on the internet as an integral part of our life.

There is so much more that I could write, some of which just makes me mad when I think about it, but I'll leave that for you the reader to find out (and I'll almost certainly post more on the subject, especially once I'm done this book, and/or start the other related literature piling in my hardrive.

some links to keep you occupied:
Free culture website
     Link to download book (found on the site above)
Students for Free Culture
Lawrence Lessig's Blog
Cory Doctorow's Blog
Free Software Foundation
Creative Commons