Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
November 19th, 2007 | by WoonZai |Lawrence Lessig never fails to impress me. The content and style of this presentation is just amazing. Creativity should not be constrained by incumbent legislature, but encouraged to be expressed in different forms that makes meaning to different groups of users. Anyone can flag user-generated content and have the content removed, without any clear indication of whether the content had violated the fair use of copyright law.
It is difficult for the judicial system to keep up to the copyright issues that comes with technology. On one end, the court has to handle the pressure to conform to precedents and the economic interests of industry titans. On the other end, it has to face the practicality of the current legislature in the face of new technology and uncontrolled sharing of information.
The only way out, Lessig argues, is to encourage competition. Competition broke the ASCAP cartel back then without any judicial interference. Perhaps, competition can do the same now. There’s no way the younger generation can appreciate and respect copyright laws if it does not make any sense, and seem to be the only weapon of recourse used by industry titans who are too slow to keep up with the times.
