TED: Larry Lessig’s read-only culture

This is definitely one of the best presentations on the issue of copyright and user generated content I’ve seen to date. Larry Lessig is the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and also chairs at the Creative Commons organization. The thing that struck me about me in his presentation over a handful of similar presentations I’ve seen in the past is the example of traditional land law vs. airplanes, and how stupid copyright laws are in comparison.

7 insightful thoughts

  1. It was going great, but I felt the credibility dropped with showing funny video clips. I would have used more serious examples.

    I agree with his summery in the end, that this is a time of prohibitions. And the “big evil” recording company that labels us as criminals will loose in the long run.

    As this generation of P2P fans grow up and fill the shoes of business and government. The common sense will begin to win.

  2. Wonderful and very true. Brilliant but where is the discussion for how to legalize the controlled part and enforce that against the actual openness of the tech? Grizz, the humor shows the intensity of freedom and there is no way to assume common sense will begin to win–things just don’t happen, especially in law, they originate through deliberate decisions. I gave up predicting the future long ago, you should consider doing the same, it is reality. Time, our one irreplaceable resource. This is one of the best and briefest summaries of modern digital financial issues I’ve seen. Now to get my reflexes as fast as my kids’, same for the lawyers and lobbyists to accomplish and after this, hope and Souza rule.

  3. That’s why you got people going back to carrying Minidisc rather than iPod. Because the iPod is a read-only tool for a read-only culture. While Minidisc is a player and a recorder, that lets you put files, music and record using PCM (no lossy compression, no compression at all). A portable recorder you carry everywhere, to get back the read-write culture. People said it was dead, and it’s still there. They said the same thing about vinyl discs. Strange how in every big capital city in the world we got shops with vinyl disks and DJs coming from all around the world there huh…

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