a moral claim as well. There was no reason that creative property
<!-- PAGE BREAK 258 -->
-should be a second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a table,
-his rights over the table don't depend upon filing a form with the
- government.
-He has a property right over the table "naturally," and he can
-assert that right against anyone who would steal the table, whether or
-not he has informed the government of his ownership of the table.
+should be a second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a
+table, his rights over the table don't depend upon filing a form with
+the government. He has a property right over the table "naturally,"
+and he can assert that right against anyone who would steal the table,
+whether or not he has informed the government of his ownership of the
+table.
</para>
<para>
-This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For
-the argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative
-property being second-class property. The argument in favor of
- formalities
-turns upon the special problems that creative property
- presents.
-The law of formalities responds to the special physics of creative
-property, to assure that it can be efficiently and fairly spread.
+This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For the
+argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative
+property being second-class property. The argument in favor of
+formalities turns upon the special problems that creative property
+presents. The law of formalities responds to the special physics of
+creative property, to assure that it can be efficiently and fairly
+spread.
</para>
<para>
No one thinks, for example, that land is second-class property just
-because you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land is
-to be effective. And few would think a car is second-class property just
-because you must register the car with the state and tag it with a
- license.
-In both of those cases, everyone sees that there is an important
-reason to secure registration—both because it makes the markets more
-efficient and because it better secures the rights of the owner. Without
-a registration system for land, landowners would perpetually have to
-guard their property. With registration, they can simply point the
- police
-to a deed. Without a registration system for cars, auto theft would
-be much easier. With a registration system, the thief has a high burden
-to sell a stolen car. A slight burden is placed on the property owner, but
-those burdens produce a much better system of protection for property
-generally.
+because you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land
+is to be effective. And few would think a car is second-class property
+just because you must register the car with the state and tag it with
+a license. In both of those cases, everyone sees that there is an
+important reason to secure registration—both because it makes
+the markets more efficient and because it better secures the rights of
+the owner. Without a registration system for land, landowners would
+perpetually have to guard their property. With registration, they can
+simply point the police to a deed. Without a registration system for
+cars, auto theft would be much easier. With a registration system, the
+thief has a high burden to sell a stolen car. A slight burden is
+placed on the property owner, but those burdens produce a much better
+system of protection for property generally.
</para>
<para>
It is similarly special physics that makes formalities important in
be presumptively uncontrolled.
</para>
<para>
-But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the
- inability
-to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a
-huge and obvious burden on the creative process. If the only way a
- library
-can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a
-lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright
-system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before
-because there are no formalities.
+But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the
+inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes
+a huge and obvious burden on the creative process. If the only way a
+library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a
+lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the
+copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been
+seen before because there are no formalities.
</para>
<para>
The Eldred Act was designed to respond to exactly this problem. If
movie based on it. It should become free if it is not worth $1 to you.
</para>
<para>
-Some worry about the burden on authors. Won't the burden of
- registering
-the work mean that the $1 is really misleading? Isn't the hassle
-worth more than $1? Isn't that the real problem with registration?
+Some worry about the burden on authors. Won't the burden of
+registering the work mean that the $1 is really misleading? Isn't the
+hassle worth more than $1? Isn't that the real problem with
+registration?
</para>
<para>
It is. The hassle is terrible. The system that exists now is awful. I
been part of our tradition for most of our history—free culture.
</para>
<para>
-If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.
-There are moments of hope in this struggle. And moments that
-surprise. When the FCC was considering relaxing ownership rules,
-which would thereby further increase the concentration in media
- ownership,
-an extraordinary bipartisan coalition formed to fight this
-change. For perhaps the first time in history, interests as diverse as the
-NRA, the ACLU, Moveon.org, William Safire, Ted Turner, and
-CodePink Women for Peace organized to oppose this change in FCC
-policy. An astonishing 700,000 letters were sent to the FCC,
- demanding
-more hearings and a different result.
+If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon. There are
+moments of hope in this struggle. And moments that surprise. When the
+FCC was considering relaxing ownership rules, which would thereby
+further increase the concentration in media ownership, an
+extraordinary bipartisan coalition formed to fight this change. For
+perhaps the first time in history, interests as diverse as the NRA,
+the ACLU, Moveon.org, William Safire, Ted Turner, and CodePink Women
+for Peace organized to oppose this change in FCC policy. An
+astonishing 700,000 letters were sent to the FCC, demanding more
+hearings and a different result.
</para>
<para>
-This activism did not stop the FCC, but soon after, a broad
- coalition
-in the Senate voted to reverse the FCC decision. The hostile
- hearings
-leading up to that vote revealed just how powerful this movement
-had become. There was no substantial support for the FCC's decision,
-and there was broad and sustained support for fighting further
- concentration
-in the media.
+This activism did not stop the FCC, but soon after, a broad coalition
+in the Senate voted to reverse the FCC decision. The hostile hearings
+leading up to that vote revealed just how powerful this movement had
+become. There was no substantial support for the FCC's decision, and
+there was broad and sustained support for fighting further
+concentration in the media.
</para>
<para>
But even this movement misses an important piece of the puzzle.
Largeness as such is not bad. Freedom is not threatened just because
-some become very rich, or because there are only a handful of big
- players.
-The poor quality of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not mean
-that you can't get a good hamburger from somewhere else.
+some become very rich, or because there are only a handful of big
+players. The poor quality of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not
+mean that you can't get a good hamburger from somewhere else.
</para>
<para>
-The danger in media concentration comes not from the
- concentration,
+The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration,
but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the
-change in copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few
- powerful
-companies that control an ever expanding slice of the media. It
-is that this concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of
-rights—property rights of a historically extreme form—that makes
-their bigness bad.
+change in copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few
+powerful companies that control an ever expanding slice of the
+media. It is that this concentration can call upon an equally bloated
+range of rights—property rights of a historically extreme
+form—that makes their bigness bad.
</para>
<!-- PAGE BREAK 277 -->
<para>
-It is therefore significant that so many would rally to demand
- competition
-and increased diversity. Still, if the rally is understood as being
-about bigness alone, it is not terribly surprising. We Americans have a
-long history of fighting "big," wisely or not. That we could be
- motivated
-to fight "big" again is not something new.
+It is therefore significant that so many would rally to demand
+competition and increased diversity. Still, if the rally is understood
+as being about bigness alone, it is not terribly surprising. We
+Americans have a long history of fighting "big," wisely or not. That
+we could be motivated to fight "big" again is not something new.
</para>
<para>
-It would be something new, and something very important, if an
-equal number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built
-within the idea of "intellectual property." Not because balance is alien
-to our tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But
- because
-the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called
-"property" is not well exercised within this tradition anymore.
+It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal
+number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within
+the idea of "intellectual property." Not because balance is alien to
+our tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But
+because the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything
+called "property" is not well exercised within this tradition anymore.
</para>
<para>
If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place
<para>
As I write these final words, the news is filled with stories about
the RIAA lawsuits against almost three hundred individuals.<footnote><para>
-<!-- f11. --> John Borland, "RIAA Sues 261 File Swappers," CNET News.com,
-September 2003, available at
-<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #65</ulink>; Paul R. La Monica, "Music
- Industry
-Sues Swappers," CNN/Money, 8 September 2003, available at
-<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #66</ulink>; Soni Sangha and Phyllis Furman with Robert Gearty, "Sued for a
-Song, N.Y.C. 12-Yr-Old Among 261 Cited as Sharers," New York Daily
-News, 9 September 2003, 3; Frank Ahrens, "RIAA's Lawsuits Meet
- Surprised
+<!-- f11. -->
+John Borland, "RIAA Sues 261 File Swappers," CNET News.com, September
+2003, available at
+<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #65</ulink>; Paul
+R. La Monica, "Music Industry Sues Swappers," CNN/Money, 8 September
+2003, available at
+<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #66</ulink>; Soni
+Sangha and Phyllis Furman with Robert Gearty, "Sued for a Song,
+N.Y.C. 12-Yr-Old Among 261 Cited as Sharers," New York Daily News, 9
+September 2003, 3; Frank Ahrens, "RIAA's Lawsuits Meet Surprised
Targets; Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among
Defendants," Washington Post, 10 September 2003, E1; Katie Dean,
-"Schoolgirl Settles with RIAA," Wired News, 10 September 2003,
- available
-at
+"Schoolgirl Settles with RIAA," Wired News, 10 September 2003,
+available at
<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #67</ulink>.
</para></footnote>
-
- Eminem
-has just been sued for "sampling" someone else's music.<footnote><para>
-<!-- f12. --> Jon Wiederhorn, "Eminem Gets Sued . . . by a Little Old Lady," mtv.com,
-17 September 2003, available at
+Eminem has just been sued for "sampling" someone else's
+music.<footnote><para>
+<!-- f12. -->
+Jon Wiederhorn, "Eminem Gets Sued . . . by a Little Old Lady,"
+mtv.com, 17 September 2003, available at
<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #68</ulink>.
</para></footnote>
- The
-story about Bob Dylan "stealing" from a Japanese author has just
- finished
-making the rounds.<footnote><para>
-<!-- f13. --> Kenji Hall, Associated Press, "Japanese Book May Be Inspiration for
- Dylan
-Songs," Kansascity.com, 9 July 2003, available at
+The story about Bob Dylan "stealing" from a Japanese author has just
+finished making the rounds.<footnote><para>
+<!-- f13. -->
+Kenji Hall, Associated Press, "Japanese Book May Be Inspiration for
+Dylan Songs," Kansascity.com, 9 July 2003, available at
<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #69</ulink>.
<!-- PAGE BREAK 334 -->
</para></footnote>
- An insider from Hollywood—who insists
-he must remain anonymous—reports "an amazing conversation with
-these studio guys. They've got extraordinary [old] content that they'd
-love to use but can't because they can't begin to clear the rights. They've
-got scores of kids who could do amazing things with the content, but
-it would take scores of lawyers to clean it first." Congressmen are
- talking
-about deputizing computer viruses to bring down computers thought
-to violate the law. Universities are threatening expulsion for kids who
-use a computer to share content.
+An insider from Hollywood—who insists he must remain
+anonymous—reports "an amazing conversation with these studio
+guys. They've got extraordinary [old] content that they'd love to use
+but can't because they can't begin to clear the rights. They've got
+scores of kids who could do amazing things with the content, but it
+would take scores of lawyers to clean it first." Congressmen are
+talking about deputizing computer viruses to bring down computers
+thought to violate the law. Universities are threatening expulsion for
+kids who use a computer to share content.
</para>
<para>
Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, the BBC has just announced
24 August 2003, available at
<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #70</ulink>.
</para></footnote>
- And in Brazil, the
-culture minister, Gilberto Gil, himself a folk hero of Brazilian music,
-has joined with Creative Commons to release content and free licenses
-in that Latin American country.<footnote><para>
+<indexterm><primary>Gil, Gilberto</primary></indexterm>
+And in Brazil, the culture minister, Gilberto Gil, himself a folk hero
+of Brazilian music, has joined with Creative Commons to release
+content and free licenses in that Latin American
+country.<footnote><para>
<!-- f15. --> "Creative Commons and Brazil," Creative Commons Weblog, 6 August
2003, available at
<ulink url="http://free-culture.cc/notes/">link #71</ulink>.
projects / text-free-culture-lessig.git / commitdiff