Lawrence Lessig, the Rock Star of Copyright Law, spoke at RIT today. Lessig, who is the founder of Creative Commons and the author of a number of books on copyright in the Internet age, gives riveting presentations (example) . There was way too much going on in this morning's to do it justice here, but there's one theme that struck me: lawbreaking as a part of life, and it's effect on democracy.
Most students in college break the law as a matter of course. Underage drinking and illegal downloading of music and movies are two examples. Twenty years ago, college students could drink in a lot of places, and there was no such thing as downloading music or video. Today, we're bombarded with advertisements telling us how our lives
will be ruined if we download even one song. A name that used to be reserved for killers and plunderers -- "pirate" -- is now used routinely to refer to those who share music on the Internet.
Lessig contends that the consequence of having a lot of laws that are difficult to enforce and not widely respected is corrosion of democratic values. Democracy is based on a broad consensus of the governed that the laws are generally reasonable. When citizens grow up habitually breaking laws, the respect for law in general is lessened, and the habit of lawbreaking becomes ingrained.
I think this an important and powerful insight. Lessig and Creative Commons have been called "commies" for some of their beliefs, but one of his core motivations is actually quite conservative, or at least traditional. He just wants a reasonable compromise on copyright and digital rights, rather than having it dictated to us by media companies.
Comments (1)
Damm. I wish I could have made that. We shipped a Beta unit for a new product Friday and taking the morning off was out of the question.
I invited lessig to have dinner with some locals & RocWiki crew back when I first heard, and I got a polite response from his handler that he was only in town for a very very short time.
Meh.
Posted by Jonathan McKamey | March 25, 2006 10:31 PM
Posted on March 25, 2006 22:31