Capturing Content

I agree with Publishers Weekly, who dubbed Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture (NY: Penguin Press, 2004) “an important book.” This is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Lessig clearly articulates the profound issues surrounding the concepts of intellectual property and copyright our global culture currently faces. Here, for instance, are some highlights from one of Lessig's arguments that helps describe the current paradigm shift in how we think about “content”:

"Capturing and sharing content ... is how we learn and communicate. But capturing and sharing through digital technology is different ... [it] promises a world of extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly shared ... [and has] given us an opportunity to do something with culture that has only ever been possible for individuals in small groups, isolated from others. Think about an old man telling a story to a collection of neighbors in a small town. Now imagine that same storytelling extended across the globe.

Yet all this is possible only if the action is presumptively legal. In the current regime of legal regulations, it is not. Think about your favorite amazing sites on the Net. Web sites that offer plot summaries from forgotten television shows; site that catalog cartoons from the 1960s; sites that mix images and sound to criticize politicians or businesses; sites that gather newspaper articles on remote topics of science or culture. There is a vast amount of creative work spread across the Internet. But as the law is currently crafted, this work is presumptively illegal." (184-5, emphasis mine)

"Never in our history has a painter had to worry about whether his painting infringed on someone else's work; but the modern-day painter, using the tools of Photoshop, sharing content on the web, must worry all the time. ... There is a free market in pencils; we needn't worry about its effect on creativity. But there is a highly regulated, monopolized market in cultural icons; the right to cultivate and transform them is not similarly free." (186, emphasis mine)