Lessig Talks DRM with Lenssen
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Written By Reprise Media | April 3, 2006 | Share This
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April Fools day is passed, with its attendent web tomfoolery in the can (Wikipedians compiled an exhaustive list of pranks). Even if you’re only a little sick of Saturday’s leftover hype, Google Blogoscoped has the perfect cure for a high jinks hangover: Philipp Lenssen distracts Stanford Law Professor and copyright reform advocate Lawrence Lessig from an extremely busy schedule (”too much travel, too much email, not enough time for reading or writing”) to summarize his views on the problems posed by Digital Rights Management (DRM), spam blogs and DVD region codes.
While Lessig advocates a simple solution to the fair use restrictions created by DRM in software, DVDs and other digital content - “allow [users] to turn the DRM off, and use the work under an assertion that the use was fair” - it’s a wholly unlikely outcome in the short term. Lessig explains:
“The problem is fear. The copyright industry fears the internet, and they are exercising their (considerable) power to achieve control. That effort is creating huge problems for a wholly creative and productive use of digital technology.”
Lessig dislikes DRM in part because he’s uncomfortable with the idea of automated policing of copyrights, since “copyright was designed with a human enforcer in mind.” He concedes that although human enforcement is a “difficult” proposition, “repressing speech” - a consequence of DRM impeding fair use - “shouldn’t be easy.” What about the spreading problem of spam blogs, which copy content wholesale without attribution or permission in order to generate ad revenue? Lessig suggests getting ordinary people involved via “legislation and a bounty system to make it enforceable,” an idea he’s explored in further detail in a previous column.
The importance of citizen involvement in pushing for fairer copyright laws is a recurring theme in the interview. Lessig’s morally opposed to law-breaking (that includes illicit peer-to-peer file sharing), even if it’s a law he disagrees with - except if it constitutes civil disobedience. Calling copyright law “insanely complicated,” he urges people to “demand the regulators justify their control.”
Topics: Interviews |