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[FYI] Lawrence Lessig on the fate of copyrights and computer networks in the digital future.



http://www.reason.com/0206/fe.jw.cyberspaces.shtml

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June 2002  

Cyberspace’s Legal Visionary  

Lawrence Lessig on the fate of copyrights and computer networks in 
the digital future.  

Interviewed by Jesse Walker  

[...]

Reason: When you were interviewed on Slashdot, you sometimes seemed 
angry at that site’s community of open-source programmers and 
advocates. You said they were "political slugs," "pathetically 
apolitical," and addicted to "irrelevant bickerings." What were you 
getting at?  

Lessig: In a sense I’m trying to shame them into doing something. 
These people, more than anybody, understand the values built into the 
Internet. But they are among the least politically active segment of 
our community, out of libertarianism or just a deep skepticism about 
the use of government. They just don’t want to pay any attention to 
it, don’t have any respect for what government does.  

If they were to become more politically active, however distasteful 
that may be to them, that could begin to put a check on what is 
achievable by others who have no hesitation about being politically 
active.  

Reason: Some of them would argue that they’re active in the form of 
civil disobedience.  

Lessig: In a world where civil disobedience was treated with 
toleration, that might be a good strategy. But we’re in a world where 
disobedience is treated with felony convictions. The idea that you 
are going to get lots of civil disobedience against the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act is just crazy. You’re going to get lots of 
prosecutions and people going away to jail. The cost of disobedience 
has become too high, and I’m not sure it’s a viable strategy anymore. 
 
There’s some basic cultural differences here. Many of the people who 
have great ideas in the Slashdot context about the way to run the 
world -- if you put them in Washington, they just don’t fit.  

Reason: Aren’t you facing the same problem? Some of the proposals in 
Future are guaranteed to be political non-starters. The chances that 
Congress is going to adopt five-year renewable copyright terms in 
this political context are zero.  

Lessig: I am not writing because I think it’s likely that policy 
makers will sit down and figure this stuff out right now. I’m more 
writing about what I think is true, and hoping that eventually a 
group of people who have the time to think through it will try to do 
something about it.  

Over 15 or 20 years, the movement that Reagan is associated with got 
the world to think about policy things differently, through many 
small chips at taken-for-granted assumptions about the world. So 
eventually it can happen.  

[...]  

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