Quote:
Originally Posted by rationalbiker
No, and upon viewing the free culture's manifesto, I have no intention of doing so. Here's part of it;
"We won’t allow the content industry to cling to obsolete modes of distribution through bad legislation."
This thought exemplifies what I just pointed out about how people promoting 'freedom' don't recognize the freedom of the producer. The producer is only free to the extent that this 'freedom mob' will allow him to be with respect to the product of his work and effort. In other words, if someone produces something, the mob invents some cultural claim to take that work from him under the guise of freedom. No thanks.
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I really would urge you to read
Free Culture anyway. I understand and appreciate that you currently disagree with Lessig’s
conclusions, or at least a strawman form of them. But one is never belittled by critically examining the arguments of those one disagrees with. For example, Lessig has concrete examples of where I think it’s hard to argue the current degree of freedom allowed under copyright law is sufficient:
Quote:
Gone with the Wind was published in 1936....
In 2001, Alice Randall tried to publish a work called The Wind Done Gone. While she called it a parody of Gone with the Wind, that was her lawyers speaking more than Randall. The work is clearly based on Mitchell’s work; in telling the story of Gone with the Wind from the perspective of the African slaves, it clearly relies upon Mitchell’s work in an intimate and extensive manner. The Mitchell estate called the work a sequel and brought a federal lawsuit to stop its publication. This story, the Mitchell estate essentially argued, was theirs to control well into the twenty-first century.
To most people, this is plainly absurd. Gone with the Wind is an extraordinarily important part of American culture; at some point, the story should be free for others to take and criticize in whatever way they want.
(The Future of Ideas, pg. 212-3)
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If you don’t agree that this is “plainly absurd,” then okay – you should skip Lessig’s books
.