A book that must be read by anyone who is interested in copyright

Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity (The Penguin Group Press 2004).

"There has never been a time in our history when more of our "culture" was as "owned" as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now." (FREE CULTURE pg. 12)

Lessig's book is about an effect of the internet that goes beyond the internet itself: "an effect upon how culture is made." (FREE CULTURE pg. 7) "My claim is that the internet has induced an important and unrecognized change in that process. That change will radically transfer a tradition that is as old as the Republic (our country) itself. Most, if the recognized this change, would reject it. Yet most dont even see the change that the Internet has introduced." (FREE CULTURE pg. 7) The government (via the legal system) never used to regulate "noncomercial culture" unless someone account of culture was lewd or disturbed the peace of the public (telling stories, sharing music, re-enacting scenes from TV, etc.). This culture was left as "free culture." The law focused on commercial creativity, also an important part of creativity and culture (become increasingly important in the USA today), but, not the dominant force of the creation of culture, but rather one part that must be balanced with the free part as well (FREE CULTURE, pg. 8)

"A free culture is not a culture without property, or in which artists can't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that i defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against the extremism that this book is written." (FREE CULTURE pg. xvi preface)

Lessig is not just concerned with the concentration of power that results from a concentration of ownership within the media industry. His even deeper rooted fear (which he feels that most people are not aware of) is that there has been a radical change in the effective scope of copyright law and this change has is responsible for a concentration of power that did not exist in the past (FREE CULTURE pg. xv preface). The law is changing and this is altering how culture is made (FREE CULTURE pg. xv preface). What was originally designated as intellectual property in our constitution has been expanded drastically. Lessig thinks we are destroying our culture by not questioning the scope of the law (that deals with intellectual property in the United States) as it continues to be more extremist and concentrates the power of creating culture in the hands of very few corporations and individuals.

Yes, technology is producing more that can be owned, but there is a trend to progressively grant ownership to already existing knowledge, creations, etc and new information that is counter to how it was done in the past. Lessig thinks that blogs are "arguably the most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have." (FREE CULTURE pg. 41)


On property systems, Lessig discusses feudalism. Under feudalism, "Not only was property held by a relatively small number of individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong interest in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control to the free market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration." (FREE CULTURE pg. 267)

"The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few powerful companies that control and ever expanding slice of the media. IT is that this concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of rights-property rights of a historically extreme form--that makes their bigness bad." (FREE CULTURE pg. 269)

The conclusion of the book discusses and interprets the HIV crisis in South Africa: problem is not the drug companies, their objective is to make as much money as possible. The problem is the politician. The drug company would be happy to sell cheaper drugs in South Africa because people are poorer, but the politician then asks why the price has to be so expensive in the United States if it is so cheap in South Africa, so the drug company decides to not give the drug to South Africa at all because it will loose more money if it has to lower the price in the united states (FREE CULTURE pg. 260)

"Freedom is not threatened just because some become very rich, or because there are only a handful of big players. The poor quality of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not mean that you can't get a good hamburger from somewhere else." (FREE CULTURE pg. 269)