Richard's Blog » intellectual property

Creative Commons

Richard — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:44:05 +0000

Creative Commons represents a potential revolution in copyright, where the default all-rights reserved, is replaced by some rights reserved, allowing content creators to specify ways their materials can be used and shared, without needing to give permission to each individual who wants to use materials in ways that are not consistent with all-rights reserved. The motivation is to encourage innovation and derivative works.

The following videos on the creative commons site, describe creative commons, successes, and its evolution. The last two videos were the first and second place winners in a moving image contest, sponsored by creative commons, to help “market” the creative commons concept.

Future of Darknets

Richard — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:20:56 +0000

In 2006 I saw a wonderful panel on “The Future of Darknets” organized by J.D. Lassica, that included a representative from the MPAA, a person whose job is to identify illegal downloaders for prosecution, and others who were advocates for less copyright restrictions, and elimination of DRM. As you might anticipate the panel was well worth my time. I recorded the session, and created a video of clips from the session. (For the record, creating this video and posting it on the web is consistent with a press/videographer agreement I signed with SXSW that allowed me to post short clips of videos from sessions).

The most prominent theme was the issue of intellectual property and all the complications associated with copyright, DRM, and illegal downloading.

Lessig vs. Valenti

Richard — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:39:12 +0000

In 2001 Lawrence Lessig and the late Jack Valenti (then president of the motion picture association) carried out a series of debates on intellectual property and copyright laws. One of these debates was carried out at USC’s Annenberg School. A Video of the entire debate is available on their site. I created a shorter video (Quicktime | WMV) that consists of some excerpts from this video. The debate is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of these is the oratory skills of both of these men. Of course, the other important points are the issues that are addressed: The tension between “stealing” from creators and the importance role of building on others’ work for innovation and creativity. The issue of whether a device/technique that can be used for illegal purposes should be illegal, even if there are reasonable legal uses for the device/tehnique. The issue of the “mickey mouse protection act”, and the fact that copyright laws are increasing the length of copyright in recent years at an exponential rate.