The cyberlaw talk was really good and interesting. A bit short (only an hour, so not much time for questions), for so much, as well as Lawrence Lessig and Bill Thompson duking it out (well, not really, they mostly agreed) and Andres Guadamuz and Jonathan Mitchell announcing the launch of CC Scotland (the project, not the official licence), but it was still interesting, especially to see Larry Lessig in the flesh. He is a good speaker, although his presentation featured words appearing on the screen in very very quick succession - Edward Tufte would not be pleased - the content of his talk was still really good. What follows is a ‘remix’ of Lessig’s presentation, cribbed from my own notes:

Remixing has always existed in the progress of human culture; ideas created by people have continually been re-expressed and re-worked by others after them, who have always been free to do so. However, with the advent of internet technologies we are now facing an Inversion. Is it because a change of technologies has led to a change of freedoms?

Computer technologies now mean anyone with a $1500 computer can become a musician, filmmaker or political activist with an audience of millions; we have gone from few-to-many to peer-to-peer. We are no longer restricted to text; in an age where “literacy” no longer implies just “reading”, will we still be free to “write” [create things in any format]?

The answer is no. The architecture of technology is now fundamentally different from the architecture of copyright: every use of a work digitally implies making an extra copy for oneself, while copyright still affirms that every copy. With paper and analogue material, regulation was the exception: most use fell outside even what is described as “fair use” - when you buy a book you have the right to read it, lend it to a friend or sell it on - there is no law on this at all. Only reproduction is covered by regulation, whether legal (fair use) or illegal (full unauthorised reproduction). But with digital materials, the default is now regulation; downloading and reading something comes attached with a set of rules and regulations about what you can do with it. With scientific texts and other knowledge being locked up this way, we are going against the principle of the Enlightenment, that human knowledge should be free (i.e. libre, as in freedom). This is the Inversion.

Copyright is an outdate legal mechanism from the 18th and 19th centuries, which have only been partly adapated for the 20th. The American response, like in many other fields, has been to wage war on remixing and re-expressing. A war mentality leads to insanity; we must sue for peace - condemning outright theft of material more, while setting up a reform of copyright and intellectual property. There’s no hope from Congress etc. for a change in copyright law, given the corporate interests, therefore we must do this ourselves. And this is what the Creative Commons project is about - reserving some, not all rights, and allowing others to adapt and remix our work. This is not total anarchy, but a balanced approach to intellectual property.

I would write my own thoughts & reactions to Lessig’s talk but I have lots and I haven’t the time right now - it is a Saturday night, you know :-) Bill Thompson spoke next, saying he had “one and a half objections” to the project, even though he broadly supports the venture. He was worried about the “collage culture” that this attitude would create (more or less bypassing Lessig’s assertion that we already are such a culture), and that as little skill or creativity is needed to remix (true, but skill is needed to remix and make something good), we could suffer from creative de-skilling. I more strongly agreed with his differentiation between Europe and the US, and the idea of the moral rights associated with copyright (claiming work as yours, not having it misquoted or misrepresented), which in the US-dominated legal culture, don’t figure much, but they do figure in Europe. In the UK, authors have to actively assert the moral right that they are the creator of the work. CC thus needs to be sensitive to these moral rights as well (the CC England & Wales project have only a brief mention of it; the Scottish version seems to have taken this on board more so).

Right - I have to dash off now. More later on what was a really interesting talk. I’ll probably update this post over the weekend somewhat with further thoughts of my own.