Can’t a guy get an autograph around here?
Last night I went to see Lawrence Lessig’s presentation at the “Open Meeting” sponsored by the newly established Creative Commons Japan. This makes the second time I’ve been within handshake-distance of the guy and still not had the chance to talk to him. (Damn sycophants, don’t they realize that I have important things to say to the professor? My autograph collection is hanging in the balance here!)
I’m not quite as interested in the Free Culture aspect of his work (I like it much better when he’s talking about architecture as politics), but the presentation was still pretty good. I certainly agreed with his points about the need for creative freedom as a bulwark against a future of DRM-enforced creative imprisonment.
I’m looking forward to his new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. His last one, The Future of Ideas, is one that I would recommend to anyone who has ever so much as touched a computer.
It will be interesting to see how well the CC licenses catch on in Japan. Several of the questions from the audience last night were pretty skeptical about the merits of these “some rights reserved” licenses. Still, if even a small fraction of the population buys into the idea, that’s a lot of creative potential.
Someone who went to the meeting with me asked an interesting question: If people who live (and write) in Japan can be assumed to have Japanese copyright protection (life of the author, plus 50 years) instead of American copyright protection (life of the author, plus unlimited near-expiration extensions), which license should be used, the Japanese or the American? Does it make a difference at all if the content is posted to and hosted on a server in the United States? Not being a lawyer, I don’t know the answers to these questions. Any IP lawyers out there care to shed some light on this one?
