WEBVTT 00:00:00.315 --> 00:00:04.492 Lawrence Lessig: Thank you very much. It's extremely cool to be here. 00:00:06.430 --> 00:00:08.539 It's just about as cool as when I spoke at Pixar. 00:00:08.739 --> 00:00:11.922 I think of these two as being highlights of my career. 00:00:12.122 --> 00:00:15.163 So, thank you very much for having me. 00:00:16.671 --> 00:00:21.721 I have two small ideas I want to use as an introduction to an argument, 00:00:22.906 --> 00:00:26.909 about the nature of access to scientific knowledge in the context of the internet, 00:00:27.663 --> 00:00:32.709 and use that argument as a step towards a plea about what we should do. 00:00:33.432 --> 00:00:35.651 So here is the first idea. 00:00:36.313 --> 00:00:39.054 I want to call it the "White-effect". 00:00:40.408 --> 00:00:46.207 And I name that after Justice Byron White, justice of the US Supreme Court, 00:00:46.346 --> 00:00:50.170 appointed by John F. Kennedy - there he is in 1962 00:00:51.170 --> 00:00:57.211 - famous before that as 'Whizzer' White on the Yale University football team. 00:00:57.565 --> 00:01:00.387 When he was appointed to the Supreme Court, he was a famous liberal, 00:01:01.741 --> 00:01:07.123 renowned liberal, the only appointee that John Kennedy had to the Supreme Court. 00:01:07.123 --> 00:01:15.434 But 'Whizzer' White grew old, and he is probably most famous for an infamous opinion, 00:01:15.588 --> 00:01:18.968 which he penned on behalf of the Supreme Court, Bowers v. Hardwick, 00:01:19.230 --> 00:01:23.837 an opinion where the Supreme Court upheld the Criminalization of Sodomy laws, 00:01:24.144 --> 00:01:27.973 with the passage: 'Against this background, to claim that a right to engage 00:01:28.034 --> 00:01:33.701 in such conduct' - homosexual sodomy - 'is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" 00:01:33.763 --> 00:01:38.749 or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.' 00:01:40.072 --> 00:01:42.558 Now, this is what I want to think of as the "White Effect". 00:01:43.374 --> 00:01:51.169 To be a liberal or a progressive is always relative to a moment, and that moment changes, 00:01:51.277 --> 00:01:56.487 and too many are liberal or progressive no more. 00:01:58.148 --> 00:02:00.327 So, that's the "White effect". Here is the second idea. 00:02:00.466 --> 00:02:05.034 The Harvard Gazette is a kind of propaganda publication of Harvard University, 00:02:05.188 --> 00:02:07.573 it talks about all the happy things at Harvard. 00:02:07.696 --> 00:02:12.580 So here's an article that it wrote, about an extraordinary macro-economist, 00:02:12.611 --> 00:02:17.647 Gita Gopinath, who has just come to Harvard, received tenure last year 00:02:17.709 --> 00:02:21.478 and is one of the most influential macroeconomists in the United States right now. 00:02:21.755 --> 00:02:25.406 This article talks about her work and her research, and at the very end, 00:02:25.529 --> 00:02:27.337 there is this puzzling passage, where it says: 00:02:27.998 --> 00:02:33.429 'Still, the shelves in her new office are nearly bare, since, said Gopinath, 00:02:33.568 --> 00:02:37.718 "Everything I need is on the Internet now." ' 00:02:40.441 --> 00:02:43.062 Right, that's the second idea. Here is the argument. 00:02:44.062 --> 00:02:51.252 So, copyright is a regulation by the State intended to change 00:02:51.344 --> 00:02:57.560 a regulation by the market. It's an exclusive right, a monopoly right, 00:02:57.699 --> 00:03:00.868 a property right granted by the State, which is necessary 00:03:00.991 --> 00:03:03.880 to solve an inevitable market failure. 00:03:05.311 --> 00:03:09.752 Now, by saying that it's necessary to solve an inevitable market failure, 00:03:10.091 --> 00:03:14.108 I'm marking myself as a pro-copyright scholar, 00:03:14.954 --> 00:03:18.884 in the sense that I believe copyright is necessary. Even in a digital age, 00:03:18.884 --> 00:03:23.854 especially in a digital age, copyright is necessary to achieve 00:03:24.623 --> 00:03:28.205 certain incentives that otherwise would be lost. 00:03:28.974 --> 00:03:33.648 But in the internet age, what we've seen as a fight about copyright, 00:03:33.864 --> 00:03:39.084 about the scope of copyright, waged most consistently in the context 00:03:39.146 --> 00:03:44.274 of the battle over artists' rights, in particular, in the context of music, 00:03:44.382 --> 00:03:50.805 where massive 'sharing' - sharing which is technically illegal - has lead to a fight 00:03:50.959 --> 00:03:56.322 fought by artists and especially by artists' representatives. 00:03:56.737 --> 00:04:02.212 And we from the Free Culture movement, have challenged the people 00:04:02.335 --> 00:04:04.527 who have been waging that fight. 00:04:04.635 --> 00:04:08.545 And they defend copyright in the context of that fight. 00:04:09.484 --> 00:04:15.908 But if we get above the din of this battle, the important thing to keep in mind 00:04:16.093 --> 00:04:21.614 is that both sides in this fight acknowledge that copyright is essential 00:04:21.691 --> 00:04:24.401 for certain creative work, 00:04:24.786 --> 00:04:30.578 and we need to respect copyright for that creative work. 00:04:30.578 --> 00:04:35.712 We, from the Free Culture movement, need to respect copyright for that work. 00:04:35.804 --> 00:04:40.935 We need to recognize that there is a place for a sensible copyright policy 00:04:41.427 --> 00:04:44.074 to protect and encourage that work. 00:04:45.659 --> 00:04:48.111 But, however - and here is the important distinction - 00:04:50.127 --> 00:04:57.736 Not only artists rely upon copyright, copyright is also relied upon by publishers, 00:04:57.859 --> 00:05:00.252 and publishers are a different animal. 00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:07.664 We don't have to be as negative as John Milton was when he wrote publishers are 00:05:07.664 --> 00:05:10.752 "Old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of books 00:05:10.875 --> 00:05:15.349 - men who do no labor in an honest profession, to [them], learning is indebted." 00:05:15.734 --> 00:05:20.279 We don't have to go quite that far to recognize why publishers are different, 00:05:20.464 --> 00:05:23.695 that the economic problem for publishers is different 00:05:24.126 --> 00:05:28.300 from the economic problems presented by creating. 00:05:29.300 --> 00:05:34.094 So who is copyright for? The publishers or the artists? 00:05:35.340 --> 00:05:38.600 Well, since the beginning of copyright in the Anglo-American tradition, 00:05:38.831 --> 00:05:43.554 the Statute of Anne of 1710, there has been this argument about whether copyright 00:05:43.554 --> 00:05:45.516 was intended for the publishers or the artists. 00:05:46.501 --> 00:05:52.727 When the Statute of Anne was originally introduced, it gave a perpetual term of copyright, 00:05:52.866 --> 00:05:56.048 which the publishers understood to be a protection for them. 00:05:56.217 --> 00:05:59.188 It was then amended to give just a limited term for copyright. 00:05:59.280 --> 00:06:03.789 Publishers were puzzled about that, because it wouldn't make sense to give a limited term 00:06:03.789 --> 00:06:05.474 if it was the publisher that was to be protected. 00:06:06.089 --> 00:06:13.149 In 1769, a court case in the context of Millar v. Taylor seemed to suggest that 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:17.157 despite the limitations of the Statute of Anne, copyright was for ever. 00:06:17.803 --> 00:06:24.576 But in 1774, in a very famous case about this book, The Seasons, by James Thomson, 00:06:24.884 --> 00:06:30.421 the House of Lords held that copyright protected by the Status of Anne was limited, 00:06:31.282 --> 00:06:35.279 holding for the first time that works passed into a public domain. 00:06:35.479 --> 00:06:39.994 And for the first time in English history, works including Shakespeare 00:06:40.087 --> 00:06:44.232 passed into the public domain. And in this moment, we can say Free Culture was born. 00:06:45.386 --> 00:06:49.558 And it also clarified that copyright was not intended for the publisher. 00:06:49.558 --> 00:06:53.090 Even if it benefited the publishers, it was a creative right 00:06:53.090 --> 00:07:00.020 and author's right. Even if benefitting publishers, copyright was for authors. 00:07:01.850 --> 00:07:06.908 So, I remark these obvious borders about the scope of copyright, 00:07:07.046 --> 00:07:13.738 because we tend to forget them. We've been fighting a battle in the context of copyright 00:07:13.738 --> 00:07:19.118 where copyright is essential, and we are spending too little attention 00:07:19.734 --> 00:07:23.910 about a battle in a context where copyright is not essential. 00:07:24.864 --> 00:07:30.839 And I mean by that, in the context of science, in the context that Gopinath was speaking of 00:07:30.839 --> 00:07:35.226 when she talked about everything being available on the internet. 00:07:35.380 --> 00:07:39.531 And the consequence of failing to pay attention to this second context 00:07:39.531 --> 00:07:43.619 within which this battle is being waged is that there is a trouble here 00:07:43.619 --> 00:07:45.419 that too few see. 00:07:45.939 --> 00:07:48.255 So let's think about this claim that everything is on the internet now. 00:07:48.855 --> 00:07:51.139 What does that mean? 00:07:51.631 --> 00:07:55.562 Here is a particular example to evaluate what that means. 00:07:56.762 --> 00:08:00.469 Much of my work, these days, is focusing on corruption 00:08:00.484 --> 00:08:03.229 in the context of this institution, Congress. 00:08:03.722 --> 00:08:06.821 So let's say that we wanted to study, you wanted to study with me, 00:08:07.006 --> 00:08:13.298 corruption in this context. Go to Google Scholar and enter a search for campaign finance. 00:08:13.682 --> 00:08:17.065 Here are the top articles that would be listed from that search. 00:08:17.911 --> 00:08:20.338 So let's say you wanted to browse through these articles 00:08:20.338 --> 00:08:26.241 and get a sense of campaign finance and how it might be related to corruption in Congress. 00:08:26.625 --> 00:08:29.739 So here are the top 10 articles. This first one, a very famous one 00:08:29.739 --> 00:08:32.735 by my former colleague Pam Karlan and Sam Issacharof. 00:08:33.627 --> 00:08:38.376 You would find, to get access to this article, you'd have to pay $29.95. 00:08:38.684 --> 00:08:43.053 The second article, housed at JSTOR, you'd have to get through to get permission 00:08:43.053 --> 00:08:46.533 from the Columbia Law Review - not quite clear how you would do that. 00:08:46.779 --> 00:08:52.187 Third article, again, $29.95. The fourth article, protected by Questia, 00:08:52.357 --> 00:08:58.514 we learn that you can get a 1-day free trial to all of these Oxford University Press articles, 00:08:58.622 --> 00:09:01.507 you'd only have to pay when that day is over 99 dollars 00:09:01.507 --> 00:09:03.007 to continue for a year. 00:09:03.130 --> 00:09:05.641 Here is the 4th article again, protected by JSTOR. 00:09:05.641 --> 00:09:09.638 The 5th article, it's an economics article, so the price is right on the surface: 00:09:09.715 --> 00:09:12.058 10 dollars to purchase access to this article. 00:09:12.151 --> 00:09:15.167 Here's the 7th article, Columbia Law Review. 00:09:15.167 --> 00:09:19.966 8th article, Columbia Law Review, 9th article, protected again by JSTOR, 00:09:20.073 --> 00:09:28.440 10th article, $29.95. So, how accessible is this information to the general public? 00:09:29.055 --> 00:09:32.763 Well, one of these you can get access to for free, at least one time only, 00:09:33.071 --> 00:09:39.554 One of them you can pay $10 for. 3 of them, $29.95, and 5 of them, terms unknown, 00:09:39.754 --> 00:09:41.316 protected by JSTOR. 00:09:41.977 --> 00:09:45.743 So, when Gopinath says "Everything I need is on the internet", 00:09:45.789 --> 00:09:51.135 what does she mean? What she means is if - and this is a big if - 00:09:53.812 --> 00:09:58.227 you're a tenured professor at an elite university or we could say a professor, 00:09:58.365 --> 00:10:00.730 or a student or professor in an elite university, or maybe 00:10:00.730 --> 00:10:06.125 a student or professor at a US university, if you are a member of the knowledge elite, 00:10:06.417 --> 00:10:09.939 then you have effectively free access to all of this information. 00:10:10.462 --> 00:10:14.074 But if you are from the rest of the world? Not so much. 00:10:15.274 --> 00:10:17.495 Now, the thing to recognize is we built this world, 00:10:17.634 --> 00:10:24.109 we built this architecture for access, these flows from the deployment of copyright, 00:10:24.340 --> 00:10:30.513 but here, copyright to benefit publishers. Not to enable authors. 00:10:30.836 --> 00:10:34.585 Not one of these authors gets money from copyright. 00:10:34.708 --> 00:10:38.685 Not one of them wants the distribution of their articles limited. 00:10:38.901 --> 00:10:44.094 Not one of them has a business model that turns upon restricting access to their work. 00:10:44.094 --> 00:10:46.744 Not one of them should support this system. 00:10:46.913 --> 00:10:52.666 As a knowledge policy for the creators of this knowledge, this is crazy. 00:10:53.589 --> 00:10:55.458 And the craziness doesn't stop here. 00:10:56.904 --> 00:11:02.006 So, my third child, this extraordinarily beautiful girl, Samantha Tess, 00:11:04.082 --> 00:11:08.037 when she was born, the doctors were worried she had a condition 00:11:08.037 --> 00:11:12.206 that would suggest jaundice. I had jaundice as a baby, so I didn't think it was serious, 00:11:12.298 --> 00:11:18.093 and I was told very forcefully by her doctor, this is extroardinarily serious. 00:11:18.678 --> 00:11:23.373 If this condition manifest in the dangerous condition, it would produce brain damage, 00:11:23.373 --> 00:11:24.489 possibly death. 00:11:24.704 --> 00:11:28.871 So, of course, we were terrified. I went home and I did what every academic did - does: 00:11:29.102 --> 00:11:33.796 I pulled everything I could from the web to study about what jaundice was 00:11:33.873 --> 00:11:39.010 and what the conditions were. Now, because I am a Harvard professor, 00:11:39.010 --> 00:11:43.003 of course, I didn't have to pay to get access to this information, but I just kept the tally. 00:11:43.003 --> 00:11:47.543 To get access to the 20 articles that I wanted access to was $435, 00:11:47.589 --> 00:11:50.816 for the ordinary human, not a Harvard professor. OK. 00:11:51.447 --> 00:11:56.542 So I gathered these articles and set them aside, believing this problem 00:11:56.542 --> 00:11:59.171 would not manifest itself in a serious way. 00:11:59.832 --> 00:12:05.633 But on her third day, she fell into a stupor, and we called the doctor, 00:12:05.633 --> 00:12:08.835 and the doctor was panciked and he said we had to get to the hospital immediately. 00:12:09.712 --> 00:12:14.292 So, at 3 o'clock in the morning, we trundled the baby up and raced to the hospital. 00:12:14.769 --> 00:12:17.889 We were sitting in the waiting room, and I brought the articles with me, 00:12:17.951 --> 00:12:22.168 because I wanted something to do, to distract me from the terror 00:12:22.168 --> 00:12:23.960 that my child had this condition. 00:12:24.237 --> 00:12:27.685 And I picked up the first of these articles, which is actually free, 00:12:27.839 --> 00:12:31.061 published on the web for free, at the American Family Physician, 00:12:31.061 --> 00:12:33.022 and I started reading about this condition. 00:12:33.592 --> 00:12:37.126 And I got to this table, a table that was going to describe 00:12:37.203 --> 00:12:43.902 when you should worry about whether the child would have too severe of this exposure. 00:12:44.456 --> 00:12:46.263 I turned the page, and this is what I found: 00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:51.245 "The rightsholder did not grant rights to reproduce this item in electronic media. 00:12:51.337 --> 00:12:54.361 For the missing item, see the original print version of this publication." 00:12:55.561 --> 00:12:59.859 And I had this moment of liberation from fear about my child, 00:12:59.859 --> 00:13:03.611 because I turned to fear about our culture. I thought, this is outrageous! 00:13:03.765 --> 00:13:09.437 The idea that we are regulating access down to the chart in an article 00:13:09.452 --> 00:13:12.984 that was posted for free to help, not doctors, but parents 00:13:13.077 --> 00:13:15.236 understand what this condition was. 00:13:15.420 --> 00:13:18.760 We are regulating access to parts of articles. 00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:24.393 Now here and throughout our architecture for access, 00:13:24.393 --> 00:13:27.599 we are building an infrastructure for this regulation. 00:13:27.876 --> 00:13:31.520 Think about the Google Books project, which is perfecting control down to the sentence, 00:13:31.736 --> 00:13:35.424 the ability to regulate access down to the sentence. 00:13:36.363 --> 00:13:40.930 By the way, I alway forget to tell this: the kid is fine, she didn't have jaundice, 00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:43.913 it is a complete non issue. 00:13:44.298 --> 00:13:48.394 But the point is, we are architecting access here, for what purpose? 00:13:48.394 --> 00:13:53.560 To maximize revenue. And why? Revenue to the artists? 00:13:53.637 --> 00:13:57.303 Revenues necessary to produce the incentive to create? 00:13:57.303 --> 00:14:01.150 Is this a limitation that serves any of the real objectives of copyright? 00:14:02.042 --> 00:14:03.312 The answer is no. 00:14:03.789 --> 00:14:08.275 It is simply the natural result of for-profit production 00:14:08.321 --> 00:14:12.334 for any good that we, quote, must have. 00:14:13.488 --> 00:14:19.589 As Bergstrom and McAfee describe in a really fantastic little bit of work, 00:14:19.712 --> 00:14:24.193 if you compare the cost per page of for-profit publishers 00:14:24.316 --> 00:14:28.975 and the cost per page of not-for-profit publishers in these different fields of science, 00:14:29.113 --> 00:14:33.505 it's a 4 and a half times factor difference cost per page. 00:14:34.351 --> 00:14:39.735 That is a function of different, of these having different objectives. 00:14:39.735 --> 00:14:43.063 One objective is to spread knowledge: that's the not-for-profit publishers, 00:14:43.217 --> 00:14:47.794 and one objective, to maximize profit: that's the for-profit publishers. 00:14:49.348 --> 00:14:54.780 Now, this architecture for access is beginning to build resistance. 00:14:55.949 --> 00:14:57.819 So, think about the story of JSTOR. 00:14:59.034 --> 00:15:02.391 JSTOR was launched in 1995, with an extraordinary amount of funding 00:15:02.391 --> 00:15:08.378 from the Mellon Foundation. That funding produced a huge archive 00:15:08.378 --> 00:15:13.519 of journal articles. So that there are now more than 1200 journals, 20 collections, 00:15:13.519 --> 00:15:19.993 53 disciplines, 303'000 issues, about 38 million pages in JSTOR archive. 00:15:21.516 --> 00:15:24.053 When this archive was launched, everybody thought it was brilliant. 00:15:24.945 --> 00:15:27.520 Everybody thought the access here was extraordinary. 00:15:28.013 --> 00:15:32.628 But today? There is increasingly criticism growing out there 00:15:32.628 --> 00:15:35.685 about how JSTOR makes its information accessible. 00:15:35.870 --> 00:15:39.207 We could think of it as a kind of "White effect". 00:15:39.468 --> 00:15:44.496 It was liberal when it was launched, but what has it become as it has grown old? 00:15:44.927 --> 00:15:47.767 So, for example, here is an article published in the 00:15:47.767 --> 00:15:51.706 California Historical Society Quarterly. It's 6 pages long. 00:15:51.860 --> 00:15:56.914 To get it, you have to pay $20 to JSTOR, this non-profit organization, 00:15:57.068 --> 00:16:01.419 leading Carl Malamud, who of course is famous for his Public Resources site, 00:16:01.557 --> 00:16:04.406 to tweet in the following way: "JSTOR is morally offensive. 00:16:04.514 --> 00:16:08.843 $20 for a 6-page article, unless you happen to work at a fancy school." 00:16:09.459 --> 00:16:12.955 Now, you might say, "This is a really important academic archive", 00:16:13.078 --> 00:16:16.925 but the question is whether this really important academic archive 00:16:16.925 --> 00:16:20.339 is going to become a kind of RIAA for the academy. 00:16:20.447 --> 00:16:24.193 Begging the question that the "White effect" always begs, 00:16:24.193 --> 00:16:28.430 whether we could do this better under a different set of assumptions. 00:16:28.599 --> 00:16:34.405 Now, of course the Open Access movement is the movement that was launched 00:16:34.405 --> 00:16:37.274 to try and do this better under different circumstances. 00:16:37.274 --> 00:16:42.258 Now, it has a long history, but its real push was inspired by 00:16:42.305 --> 00:16:46.466 a dramatic increase in the cost of journals. 00:16:46.604 --> 00:16:52.338 So, if this is a study between 1986 and 2004 by the American Research Libraries, 00:16:52.446 --> 00:16:57.964 this is the increase in inflation, this is the increase in the cost of serials, 00:16:57.964 --> 00:17:02.467 it's obvious that the market power of these publishers is being exploited, 00:17:02.574 --> 00:17:08.526 because the purchasers of these serials have no choice but to buy them. 00:17:08.680 --> 00:17:15.435 It's in part motivated by this cost concern, it's also motivated by a sense of unfairness. 00:17:15.604 --> 00:17:17.900 We do all the work, they get all the money, here. 00:17:18.730 --> 00:17:22.904 So the response to these two kinds of concerns has been two: 00:17:23.058 --> 00:17:28.230 #1 an open access self-archiving movement, where the push has been 00:17:28.230 --> 00:17:31.113 "Let's get as many things out there archived on the Web as we can, 00:17:31.205 --> 00:17:34.442 pre-prints and whatever we can get up, and make sure 00:17:34.442 --> 00:17:38.550 the Web can make them accessible" - and an Open Access publishing movement. 00:17:39.058 --> 00:17:41.412 Now, what's the difference between these two movements? 00:17:41.412 --> 00:17:48.212 The difference is licensing. Some "open" is "free", in the sense that Richard Stallman 00:17:48.212 --> 00:17:52.721 made famous by his quote: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. 00:17:52.890 --> 00:17:56.897 To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, 00:17:56.897 --> 00:17:58.997 not as in free beer." 00:18:00.151 --> 00:18:05.605 So, some aspect of the Open Access publishing is free as in free speech, 00:18:05.929 --> 00:18:11.258 some "open" is not. Some is just free as in: "You can download it freely, 00:18:11.396 --> 00:18:15.785 but the rights that you get from the download are just as broad 00:18:15.785 --> 00:18:18.932 as narrowly granted by some implicit copyright rule. 00:18:19.193 --> 00:18:26.616 Now, "free", as in licensed freely, has been the objective that the Science Commons project, 00:18:26.616 --> 00:18:29.006 which is a project that Creative Commons has been pushing, 00:18:29.052 --> 00:18:34.696 and pushing as part of a broader strategy for producing 00:18:34.696 --> 00:18:38.225 the information architecture that science needs, as they announce 00:18:38.225 --> 00:18:41.043 in their "Principles for open science". There are four principles here. 00:18:41.043 --> 00:18:46.292 The first is, there should be open access to literature, by which Science Commons says: 00:18:46.369 --> 00:18:49.282 you should be on the internet, literature "should be on the internet 00:18:49.375 --> 00:18:52.665 in digital form, with permission granted in advance 00:18:52.757 --> 00:18:56.987 to users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link 00:18:57.080 --> 00:19:02.629 to the full texts of articles, crawl them indexing, pass them as data to software, 00:19:02.706 --> 00:19:04.844 or use them for any other lawful purpose, 00:19:04.890 --> 00:19:09.623 without financial, legal or technical barriers other than those inseparable 00:19:09.623 --> 00:19:11.874 from gaining access to the internet itself." 00:19:12.305 --> 00:19:14.526 That's what "free", here, means. 00:19:15.003 --> 00:19:18.337 Second, access to research tools: there should be "materials necessary 00:19:18.337 --> 00:19:22.202 to replicate funded research - cell lines, model animals, DNA tools, 00:19:22.386 --> 00:19:26.152 reagents, and more - should be described in digital formats, 00:19:26.199 --> 00:19:29.330 made available under standard terms of use or contracts, 00:19:29.330 --> 00:19:34.717 with infrastructure or resources to fulfill requests to qualified scientists, 00:19:34.717 --> 00:19:37.506 and with full credit provided to the scientist who created the tools." 00:19:37.676 --> 00:19:42.513 #3 Data should be in the public domain. "Research data, data sets, databases, 00:19:42.513 --> 00:19:44.367 and protocols should be in the public domain." 00:19:44.367 --> 00:19:46.436 meaning no copyright restrictions at all. 00:19:46.513 --> 00:19:49.078 And 4, Open cyber-infrastructure: 00:19:49.155 --> 00:19:52.607 "Data without structure and annotation is an opportunity lost. 00:19:52.699 --> 00:19:56.970 Research data should flow in an open, public and extensible infrastructure 00:19:57.016 --> 00:20:01.957 that supports its recombination and reconfiguration into computer models, 00:20:02.050 --> 00:20:03.965 its searchability by search engines, 00:20:03.996 --> 00:20:08.166 and its use by both scientists and the taxpaying public. 00:20:08.258 --> 00:20:11.217 This infrastructure is an essential public good." 00:20:12.125 --> 00:20:15.945 Now, my view is, this the right way - you might think this is the left way - 00:20:15.945 --> 00:20:22.031 but it's the correct way to instantiate this Open Access movement. 00:20:22.231 --> 00:20:25.982 The values and the efficiency and the justice in this architecture 00:20:26.089 --> 00:20:29.880 are the right values, efficiency and justice for an Open Access movement. 00:20:29.880 --> 00:20:34.325 So let's call it, following Stallman, the Free Access Movement. 00:20:34.479 --> 00:20:36.781 And the critical question of the Free Access movement 00:20:36.874 --> 00:20:41.455 is the license that governs access to the information being provided. 00:20:41.455 --> 00:20:43.752 Does the license grant freedoms? 00:20:44.260 --> 00:20:47.556 And that, of course, was the motivation between the Public Library of Science - 00:20:47.664 --> 00:20:50.692 every one of their articles is published under a Creative Commons 00:20:50.754 --> 00:20:53.203 Attribution license, the freest license we have. 00:20:54.126 --> 00:20:59.767 And that is increasingly the practice, surprisingly, of the largest publishers, 00:20:59.767 --> 00:21:02.910 as described by this wonderful project housed here at CERN, 00:21:03.064 --> 00:21:05.577 which is studying Open Access publishing. 00:21:06.654 --> 00:21:12.068 This is the first of three stages to this project. When studying the large publishers, 00:21:12.191 --> 00:21:16.290 this study concludes that "Half of the large publishers use some version 00:21:16.290 --> 00:21:21.364 of a Creative Commons license. These seven publish 72% of the titles 00:21:21.364 --> 00:21:23.879 and 71% of the articles investigated. 00:21:23.956 --> 00:21:31.461 And of these, 82% use the freest license, cc-by, and 18% use cc-by-nc", non commercial. 00:21:31.676 --> 00:21:38.550 And that of course is an excellent report on the progress of this free access movement 00:21:38.550 --> 00:21:40.497 in the context of the largest publishers. 00:21:40.497 --> 00:21:45.635 But what's not excellent in this story is the other publishers here. 00:21:46.219 --> 00:21:52.081 For these other publishers, only 73% you can determine copyright status 00:21:52.081 --> 00:21:58.375 69% transfer the copyright to the publisher. Only 21 % of the articles 00:21:58.421 --> 00:22:01.300 have any Creative Commons license attached at all. 00:22:02.300 --> 00:22:08.111 Now, this is because these other publishers are using copyright as a means, 00:22:09.157 --> 00:22:15.020 a means to a non-knowledge ends, to a non-copyright ends. 00:22:15.250 --> 00:22:18.328 So, for example, they are using it to support the societies 00:22:18.328 --> 00:22:20.762 that might happen to be associated with publishing 00:22:20.762 --> 00:22:23.892 that particular journal, that society that might study 00:22:23.985 --> 00:22:25.208 one particular of science. 00:22:25.392 --> 00:22:28.336 That society, of course, is valuable, but what they are doing 00:22:28.336 --> 00:22:31.357 is using copyright to support that society. 00:22:31.357 --> 00:22:36.775 And the consequence of that strategy is to block access to all but the few. 00:22:37.221 --> 00:22:40.078 We don't achieve the objectives of the Enlightenment, 00:22:40.155 --> 00:22:44.389 we achieve the reality of an elite-nment, the elite-nment 00:22:44.389 --> 00:22:47.624 which describes the way in which we spread knowledge 00:22:47.624 --> 00:22:50.659 despite the ideals of the Enlightenment. 00:22:50.706 --> 00:22:55.791 And the point I'm emphasizing here is that it's for no good copyright reason. 00:22:56.714 --> 00:23:01.533 Now, the slowness inside of science to embrace this more broadly, 00:23:01.640 --> 00:23:05.121 especially among the smaller publishers, may surprise some, 00:23:05.198 --> 00:23:08.976 or maybe it doesn't surprise. The whole design of science 00:23:09.068 --> 00:23:13.496 is to be a fad-resistor, the idea is to have an infrastructure 00:23:13.573 --> 00:23:17.490 that avoids fads, and tradition then becomes the metric of what's right 00:23:17.521 --> 00:23:18.805 or of what's good in science. 00:23:18.882 --> 00:23:25.181 But I think it's time to recognize that Free Access, as in free, as in speech access 00:23:25.181 --> 00:23:26.866 is no fad. 00:23:26.866 --> 00:23:32.977 And it's time to push this non fad more broadly in the context of science. 00:23:33.561 --> 00:23:38.623 Now, just because I'm talking about how bad some area of science is, 00:23:38.762 --> 00:23:43.011 I don't mean to suggest that the arts is good, right? 00:23:43.011 --> 00:23:45.984 We have practices in the context of the arts that are just as bad, here. 00:23:46.138 --> 00:23:51.408 For example, think about a recent episode around YouTube. 00:23:51.531 --> 00:23:54.586 You know, we should not minimize the significance of YouTube 00:23:54.647 --> 00:23:56.926 in the infrastructure of culture right now. 00:23:57.003 --> 00:23:59.611 YouTube now has 43 different languages. 00:23:59.672 --> 00:24:03.466 There is more uploaded in one month on Youtube 00:24:03.512 --> 00:24:08.311 than was broadcast by the major networks in the United States 00:24:08.327 --> 00:24:10.557 over the last 60 years. 00:24:11.342 --> 00:24:16.012 Every single day, 6 new years of video gets uploaded to YouTube. 00:24:16.135 --> 00:24:19.289 There are 2 billion views of YouTube every single year. 00:24:19.381 --> 00:24:24.376 every single day, sorry. That's 40% increase over just the last year. 00:24:24.484 --> 00:24:28.232 And I've been famously a fan of this extraordinary site 00:24:28.340 --> 00:24:31.679 because I celebrate the kind of read-write creativity 00:24:31.756 --> 00:24:34.322 that I think YouTube has encouraged. 00:24:34.322 --> 00:24:38.675 And I got this sense of what we should think of as read-write creativity 00:24:38.675 --> 00:24:40.927 when I was reading testimony at this place 00:24:40.927 --> 00:24:44.345 by this man, John Philip Souza, in 1906. 00:24:44.391 --> 00:24:48.914 when he was - I didn't read it in 1906 but the testimony was given in 1906 - 00:24:49.145 --> 00:24:52.419 when Souza was testifying about this technology, 00:24:52.419 --> 00:24:56.090 what he called "talking machines". 00:24:56.660 --> 00:25:00.461 Now, Souza was not a fan of the talking machines. 00:25:00.861 --> 00:25:02.454 This is what he had to say about them: 00:25:02.561 --> 00:25:06.436 "These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development 00:25:06.513 --> 00:25:08.013 of music in this country. 00:25:08.244 --> 00:25:11.100 When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings 00:25:11.300 --> 00:25:13.898 you would find young people together singing the songs 00:25:13.898 --> 00:25:15.875 of the day or the old songs. 00:25:15.875 --> 00:25:20.783 Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. 00:25:21.660 --> 00:25:24.693 We will not have a vocal chord left," Souza said, 00:25:24.693 --> 00:25:27.790 "The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, 00:25:27.898 --> 00:25:32.362 as was the tail of man when he came from the ape." 00:25:34.716 --> 00:25:36.401 Now this is the picture I want you to focus on. 00:25:36.539 --> 00:25:40.008 This picture of "young people together, singing the songs of the day 00:25:40.008 --> 00:25:41.231 or the old songs". 00:25:41.231 --> 00:25:46.671 This is a picture of culture. We could call it, using modern computer terminology, 00:25:46.671 --> 00:25:48.941 a kind of read-write culture. 00:25:49.417 --> 00:25:52.780 It's a culture where people participate in the creation and the re-creation 00:25:52.780 --> 00:25:55.107 of their culture: in that sense, it's read-write. 00:25:56.061 --> 00:25:59.451 And the opposite of read-write creativity, then, we should call 00:25:59.451 --> 00:26:03.933 "read-only" culture. A culture where creativity is consumed 00:26:03.933 --> 00:26:09.522 but the consumer is not a creator. A culture, in this sense, that's top-down, 00:26:09.691 --> 00:26:12.807 where the vocal cords of the millions of ordinary potential creators 00:26:12.930 --> 00:26:16.644 has been lost, and lost, because, as Souza said, 00:26:16.736 --> 00:26:22.668 because of these infernal machines: technology, technology like this, 00:26:22.791 --> 00:26:25.833 or technology like this, to produce a culture like this, 00:26:26.602 --> 00:26:31.210 a culture which enabled efficient consumption, what we call "reading", 00:26:32.056 --> 00:26:36.736 but inefficient amateur production, what we should call "writing". 00:26:37.321 --> 00:26:41.017 A culture good for listening, but not a culture good for speaking, 00:26:41.079 --> 00:26:44.908 a culture good for watching, a culture not good for creating. 00:26:46.246 --> 00:26:49.434 Now, the first popular instantiation of the internet, 00:26:49.434 --> 00:26:51.446 long after you guys gave us the World Wide Web, 00:26:51.446 --> 00:26:54.460 but the first one people really paid attention to, 00:26:54.876 --> 00:26:59.841 around 1997 and 1998, was a read-only internet. 00:27:00.041 --> 00:27:04.990 So, Napster, which of course, built the largest music archive, 00:27:04.990 --> 00:27:09.212 is still a music archive of music created by others 00:27:09.212 --> 00:27:13.361 and the legal version, the iTunes Music Store, was an archive of the music 00:27:13.361 --> 00:27:16.861 created by others, that you could buy for 99 cents. 00:27:17.014 --> 00:27:19.153 These were technologies to enable access, 00:27:19.153 --> 00:27:21.380 but access to culture created elsewhere. 00:27:22.318 --> 00:27:25.654 But then, shortly in - after the turn of the century, I think, 00:27:25.731 --> 00:27:28.082 the internet became fundamentally read-write. 00:27:28.698 --> 00:27:31.554 People began taking, and remixing, and sharing 00:27:31.554 --> 00:27:36.441 their creativity on the internet, and YouTube was the platform for that. 00:27:36.488 --> 00:27:40.650 So, my favorite example, which I first saw on YouTube, is this: 00:27:40.712 --> 00:27:46.310 [Read my lips by: Atmo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhlHUTBgAMw] 00:27:51.218 --> 00:27:59.498 "Bush: My love, there's only you in my life, 00:27:59.852 --> 00:28:03.576 the only thing that's right. 00:28:06.668 --> 00:28:14.847 Blair: My first love: you're every breath that I take, 00:28:14.970 --> 00:28:19.992 you're every step I make. 00:28:21.377 --> 00:28:28.539 Bush: And I, I want to share 00:28:28.631 --> 00:28:34.699 Bush and Blair: all my love with you 00:28:35.330 --> 00:28:39.429 Bush: No one else will do. 00:28:41.922 --> 00:28:44.206 Blair: And your eyes 00:28:44.206 --> 00:28:46.199 Bush: Your eyes, your eyes 00:28:46.199 --> 00:28:52.820 Bush and Blair: they tell me how much you care for... 00:28:52.820 --> 00:28:55.707 announcer: remember to(?) take dictation" 00:28:55.707 --> 00:28:59.608 Lessig: OK. And then.more recently, I don't know if (?) many of you 00:28:59.608 --> 00:29:01.662 have seen this extraordinary site ThruYou. 00:29:01.755 --> 00:29:05.194 This is a site that takes content only from YouTube 00:29:05.286 --> 00:29:09.999 and remixes it to produce albums and videos. And this is his latest, you know. 00:29:10.091 --> 00:29:12.114 Voice: This is my mother: 00:29:12.206 --> 00:29:15.727 Mother: Howdy, howdy. OK. 00:29:15.727 --> 00:29:20.232 [plays a continuo on keyboard] 00:29:20.401 --> 00:29:22.086 Tenesan1 [see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J8sSXO9VWk ] 00:29:22.086 --> 00:29:24.878 Tenesan1: The song I'm going to sing, I wrote, is called "Green" 00:29:24.924 --> 00:29:28.889 because ... (?) 00:29:29.904 --> 00:29:35.706 I'm seing beauty created on the land 00:29:37.537 --> 00:29:44.724 On Earth the third day, producing all the plants 00:29:45.077 --> 00:29:52.603 Mother Nature created by the most high God 00:29:52.819 --> 00:29:58.488 I'm seeing beauty and it's green to me 00:29:58.488 --> 00:30:04.198 [other instruments enter] 00:30:04.198 --> 00:30:09.163 Spotting tranquillity, peace and restoration 00:30:11.116 --> 00:30:19.137 Check all the water travelling from roots 00:30:19.275 --> 00:30:26.261 Then you will see roots digging deep, building a strong foundation 00:30:26.369 --> 00:30:33.326 Then finally a stem shoots through 00:30:33.326 --> 00:30:38.063 I'm seeing beauty, it's green.. 00:30:38.063 --> 00:30:42.011 Lessig: So this is then what I think of as a platform for read-write creativity. 00:30:42.134 --> 00:30:44.544 But then the second stage of this, I think is ultimately 00:30:44.544 --> 00:30:46.905 much more interesting. It's the way that this platform 00:30:46.905 --> 00:30:49.253 has become a platform for read-write communities, 00:30:49.330 --> 00:30:53.930 which means creativity, which then gets remixed by others 00:30:54.022 --> 00:30:56.802 in response to the initial read-write creativity. 00:30:56.802 --> 00:30:58.364 So here is an example. This video: 00:30:58.364 --> 00:31:02.903 [ "Crank That" by Soulja Boy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLGLum5SyKQ + Superman:] You Soulja Boy.. 00:31:02.995 --> 00:31:07.178 I got a new dance fo you all called the soulja boy 00:31:07.178 --> 00:31:10.212 You gotta punch then crank back three times from left to right 00:31:10.212 --> 00:31:16.180 Aaah! 00:31:16.288 --> 00:31:18.142 Lessig: so that video inspired this video: 00:31:18.249 --> 00:31:33.231 [video 2] You Soulja Boy ... 00:31:33.277 --> 00:31:35.794 Lessig: which then inspired this video 00:31:35.794 --> 00:31:51.964 [Video 3] Soulja Boy ... 00:31:51.964 --> 00:31:54.506 Lessig: Well here is another example. I'm sure many of you remember 00:31:54.506 --> 00:31:56.390 these extraordinary movies by John Hughes, 00:31:56.467 --> 00:31:59.036 what we used to think of as the Brat Pack, until we knew 00:31:59.036 --> 00:32:00.828 that there was a Brat Pack before these guys. 00:32:00.936 --> 00:32:03.923 So this is the first bit of cultural, 00:32:04.046 --> 00:32:05.577 and I think here is the second. 00:32:05.607 --> 00:32:10.462 This is a music video by the band Phoenix, with their song Lisztomania: 00:32:10.523 --> 00:32:17.071 [Lisztomania: Phoenix' clip] 00:32:17.086 --> 00:32:19.253 Lessig (over clip): So classic music video style 00:32:19.376 --> 00:32:23.339 [clip continues] 00:32:23.339 --> 00:32:25.270 So sentimental 00:32:25.270 --> 00:32:28.953 Lessig: Somebody got the idea that they would take John Hughes' content 00:32:28.953 --> 00:32:32.713 and remix it with the music by Phoenix. They produced this: 00:32:34.005 --> 00:32:50.594 [remix] 00:32:50.594 --> 00:32:52.010 So sentimental 00:32:53.086 --> 00:32:54.571 not sentimental, no 00:32:54.648 --> 00:32:57.244 romantic not disgusting yet 00:32:57.337 --> 00:33:02.457 Darling, I'm down and lonely when with the fortunate is only 00:33:03.580 --> 00:33:05.034 I've been looking for something else 00:33:05.034 --> 00:33:09.254 Do let, do let, do let, jugulate, do let, do let, do 00:33:09.331 --> 00:33:11.905 Let's go slowly discouraged 00:33:12.043 --> 00:33:19.130 Distant from other interests on your favorite weekend ending... 00:33:19.130 --> 00:33:22.721 Lessig: Then somebody had the idea that they would make a local version 00:33:22.844 --> 00:33:25.955 of this remix video. So this is the Brooklyn version: 00:33:26.109 --> 00:33:57.892 [Brooklyn remix:] 00:33:57.984 --> 00:34:01.311 Lessig: And then San Francisco decided they'd like to copy: 00:34:01.434 --> 00:34:28.737 [San Francisco remix:] 00:34:28.737 --> 00:34:31.528 Lessig: And then Boston University decided they would copy: 00:34:31.681 --> 00:34:58.596 [Boston U remix:] 00:34:58.596 --> 00:35:01.198 Lessig: There are others, literally scores of these on the internet, 00:35:01.198 --> 00:35:02.652 from every place around the world. 00:35:02.683 --> 00:35:04.629 (1 sentence ????) 00:35:04.629 --> 00:35:09.583 every other place... these people doing the same kind of remix. 00:35:09.676 --> 00:35:15.171 The point to recognize is that this is then what Souza was romanticizing 00:35:15.263 --> 00:35:18.598 when Souza was talking about the young people getting together 00:35:18.598 --> 00:35:20.436 and singing the songs of the day or the old songs. 00:35:20.529 --> 00:35:22.967 But they are not singing the songs or the old songs 00:35:22.967 --> 00:35:26.513 in their backyard or on the corner, they are now singing them 00:35:26.513 --> 00:35:30.173 on this free digital platform that allows people to sing and respond, 00:35:30.250 --> 00:35:32.899 and respond again all across the world, 00:35:32.976 --> 00:35:37.132 in my view, important and valuable, in understanding 00:35:37.132 --> 00:35:39.913 how this kind of culture develops and spreads. 00:35:39.913 --> 00:35:41.059 Now, is it legal? 00:35:42.798 --> 00:35:46.605 Well, YouTube has just stepped into this battle, of whether it's legal. 00:35:46.697 --> 00:35:49.540 They've launched this Copyright School 00:35:49.602 --> 00:35:51.713 So I will give you a little bit of their copyright school. 00:35:51.744 --> 00:36:11.206 [video from http://www.youtube.com/copyright_school - original subtitled in ca 40 languages] 00:36:11.206 --> 00:36:13.773 "Everybody has really been looking forward to the new video 00:36:13.773 --> 00:36:15.058 "from Lumpy and the Lumpettes. 00:36:16.242 --> 00:36:18.135 "Even Lumpy. 00:36:23.173 --> 00:36:28.167 "Russell's a huge fan. He can't wait to tell all his friends about it. 00:36:29.382 --> 00:36:33.022 "'Hey, Russell, you didn't create that video! 00:36:33.145 --> 00:36:35.525 "'You just copied someone else's content.'" 00:36:35.648 --> 00:36:38.646 Lessig: OK, this first part is pretty standard, 00:36:38.738 --> 00:36:40.849 talking about copying people's content, uploading it, 00:36:41.003 --> 00:36:43.082 and even copying a live performance and uploading it. 00:36:43.205 --> 00:36:46.468 And that's fair, that's true, that's accurate in its statement 00:36:46.468 --> 00:36:49.524 of what copyright law is, and what I think copyright law should be. 00:36:49.524 --> 00:36:51.671 But I want to focus on their talk about remix, 00:36:51.747 --> 00:36:54.557 which might be confusing to you, and if you do, you should buy 00:36:54.557 --> 00:36:57.370 multiple copies of my book, "Remix" to understand what it's about. 00:36:57.478 --> 00:37:00.119 But here's YouTube's version of the story of remix 00:37:00.166 --> 00:37:04.554 [YouTube video cont.] "'Oh, Russell! Your reuse of the Lumpy's content is clever, 00:37:04.554 --> 00:37:06.774 "'but did you get permission for it? 00:37:06.774 --> 00:37:09.822 "'Mashups or remixes of content may also require permission 00:37:09.822 --> 00:37:12.392 "'from the original copyright owner, depending on whether or not 00:37:12.392 --> 00:37:14.369 "'the use is a fair use. 00:37:14.462 --> 00:37:34.495 "'In the United States [text shown onscreen is read very fast] ... 00:37:34.510 --> 00:37:36.472 "'...you should consult a qualified copyright attorney.'" 00:37:37.503 --> 00:37:41.380 Lessig: OK. "Consult a qualified copyright attorney"? 00:37:41.472 --> 00:37:46.065 These are 15-year olds. You're trying to teach 15-year olds 00:37:46.065 --> 00:37:48.247 how to obey the law, and what you do is you give them 00:37:48.247 --> 00:37:50.377 this thing called fair use, and you read it so fast 00:37:50.377 --> 00:37:51.862 nobody can understand it. 00:37:51.877 --> 00:37:53.900 You believe you've actually explained something sensible? 00:37:53.946 --> 00:37:55.139 This is crazy talk. 00:37:55.262 --> 00:37:58.698 Of course we train lawyers to understand it, and not think it's crazy talk, 00:37:58.805 --> 00:38:01.957 but non lawyers should recognize it's crazy talk. 00:38:01.957 --> 00:38:04.185 It's an absurd system here. 00:38:04.231 --> 00:38:06.894 And of course, a sensible system would say: 00:38:06.971 --> 00:38:12.049 "Then it should be plainly legal for Russell to make a remix, 00:38:12.049 --> 00:38:15.435 "a non commercial consumer making a remix of content 00:38:15.450 --> 00:38:19.367 "that he sees out there, even if it's not legal for YouTube 00:38:19.367 --> 00:38:22.776 "to distribute it without paying some sort of royalty 00:38:22.776 --> 00:38:26.338 "to copyright owners whose work has been remixed." 00:38:26.338 --> 00:38:29.664 Now the point is, the significance of this kind of culture, 00:38:29.664 --> 00:38:31.940 this kind of remix culture, and the opportunity 00:38:31.940 --> 00:38:35.391 for this remix culture to flourish is recognized by people on the left, 00:38:35.498 --> 00:38:39.233 and the right. Here is my favorite little bit. 00:38:39.248 --> 00:38:42.342 It's a little bit bad video, but it's by one of my favorite 00:38:42.342 --> 00:38:44.657 libertarians from Cato Institute, which is one of the 00:38:44.657 --> 00:38:47.367 most important libertarian think-tanks in the United States, 00:38:47.367 --> 00:38:48.598 talking about this: 00:38:48.598 --> 00:38:51.733 Libertarian man: Copyright policy isn't just about how to incentivize 00:38:51.810 --> 00:38:54.007 the production of a certain kind of artistic commodity. 00:38:54.007 --> 00:38:57.191 It's about what level of control we're going to permit to be 00:38:57.191 --> 00:39:01.534 exercised over our social realities, social realities that are now 00:39:01.580 --> 00:39:04.518 inevitably permeated by pop culture. 00:39:04.625 --> 00:39:08.411 I think it's important that we keep these two different kinds 00:39:08.411 --> 00:39:12.047 of public uses in mind. If we only focus on how to 00:39:12.109 --> 00:39:14.583 maximize the supply of one, 00:39:14.706 --> 00:39:18.859 I think we risk suppressing this different and richer 00:39:18.859 --> 00:39:21.837 and, in some ways, maybe even more important one. 00:39:21.914 --> 00:39:24.604 Lessig: Bingo. That's the point. 00:39:24.696 --> 00:39:28.370 There are two kinds of cultures here, two kinds of culture: 00:39:28.447 --> 00:39:30.901 the commercial culture and the amateur culture. 00:39:30.947 --> 00:39:34.613 And we have to have a system that tries to recognize and encourage both. 00:39:34.613 --> 00:39:39.362 And even YouTube, now, the company most responsible 00:39:39.362 --> 00:39:41.675 for this revival of this remix culture, 00:39:41.675 --> 00:39:45.650 even YouTube, now, is criminalizing the remixer. 00:39:45.696 --> 00:39:46.935 OK, now that's the argument. 00:39:46.935 --> 00:39:48.235 Here is what I think we need to do here. 00:39:48.235 --> 00:39:51.886 In both these contexts, both science and culture, 00:39:51.979 --> 00:39:53.463 we need reform. 00:39:53.463 --> 00:39:55.909 That's not to say we need the abolition of copyright. 00:39:55.986 --> 00:39:59.479 There are copyright abolitionists out there, and I'm not one them. 00:39:59.479 --> 00:40:03.167 What we need is reform, both of the law and of us. 00:40:03.229 --> 00:40:08.070 So, of the law: I, last year, had the opportunity - 00:40:08.070 --> 00:40:10.729 surprising, from the perspective of 10 years ago - 00:40:10.729 --> 00:40:13.878 but I was invited by WIPO to talk to WIPO, 00:40:13.878 --> 00:40:16.552 and both my presentation and the current Director General 00:40:16.629 --> 00:40:20.274 has a conception of what WIPO should do here 00:40:20.274 --> 00:40:22.613 and it's very similar. They should launch what we could think of 00:40:22.613 --> 00:40:26.146 as a Blue Skies Commission, a commission to think about 00:40:26.146 --> 00:40:29.326 what architecture for copyright makes sense in the digital age. 00:40:29.388 --> 00:40:32.168 The presumption is, copyright is necessary, 00:40:32.168 --> 00:40:35.325 but the presumption is also that the architecture from the 20th century 00:40:35.325 --> 00:40:37.786 doesn't make sense in a digital context. 00:40:37.879 --> 00:40:41.228 And the elements of, in my view, of this architecture 00:40:41.228 --> 00:40:42.805 that would make sense, are 5. 00:40:42.820 --> 00:40:46.551 #1 Copyright has got to be simple. If it purports to regulate 00:40:46.567 --> 00:40:49.667 15 year olds, 15 year olds must be able to understand it. 00:40:49.759 --> 00:40:52.491 They don't understand it now. 00:40:52.491 --> 00:40:53.945 No one understands it now. 00:40:54.037 --> 00:40:56.255 And we need to remake it, to make it simple, 00:40:56.302 --> 00:40:59.800 if it tends to regulate as broadly as it regulates. 00:40:59.800 --> 00:41:01.777 #2 It needs to be efficient. 00:41:02.239 --> 00:41:05.024 Copyright is a property system. It also happens to be 00:41:05.024 --> 00:41:08.168 the most inefficient property system known to man. 00:41:09.137 --> 00:41:12.626 We can't know who owns what under this system, 00:41:12.733 --> 00:41:15.632 because we have no system for recording ownership 00:41:15.663 --> 00:41:18.070 and allowing us to allocate ownership as we want. 00:41:18.070 --> 00:41:23.155 And the only remedy to that is to restore a kind of formality, 00:41:23.155 --> 00:41:25.952 at least a formality required to maintain a copyright. 00:41:26.029 --> 00:41:29.956 And this is a position that's even supported by the RIAA 00:41:30.048 --> 00:41:32.079 as one of the essential reforms to copyright. 00:41:32.079 --> 00:41:37.102 #3 Copyright has got to be better targeted. It's got to regulate selectively. 00:41:37.194 --> 00:41:39.519 So if you think about the distinction between copies and remix, 00:41:39.581 --> 00:41:42.607 and the distinction between the professional and the amateur, 00:41:42.684 --> 00:41:46.049 of course, we get this matrix - lawyers deal in two dimensions, 00:41:46.111 --> 00:41:48.644 you guys in hundred dimensions but here is my two dimensions - 00:41:48.690 --> 00:41:51.682 What we have in the current regime of copyright 00:41:51.729 --> 00:41:55.006 is presumption of copyright regulates the same 00:41:55.006 --> 00:41:57.158 across these four possibilities. 00:41:57.219 --> 00:42:00.435 But that's a mistake. Obviously copyright needs to regulate 00:42:00.435 --> 00:42:04.028 efficiently here, copies of professional works, 00:42:04.044 --> 00:42:08.304 so 10'000 copies of Madonna's latest CD is a problem 00:42:08.304 --> 00:42:09.958 that copyright law needs to worry about, 00:42:10.035 --> 00:42:13.964 But this area, amateurs remixing culture needs to be free 00:42:13.964 --> 00:42:17.211 of the regulation of copyright. Not fair use, but free use. 00:42:17.211 --> 00:42:20.011 Not even triggering copyright's concern. 00:42:20.057 --> 00:42:22.431 And then these two middle cases are harder. 00:42:22.477 --> 00:42:25.208 They need a little more freedom, but they need to assure 00:42:25.208 --> 00:42:28.332 some kind of control. So if you share Madonna's latest CD 00:42:28.332 --> 00:42:31.255 with your 10'000 best friends, that's a problem. 00:42:31.301 --> 00:42:33.432 There needs to be some response to that problem. 00:42:33.432 --> 00:42:36.646 And if you take a book and turn it into a movie, 00:42:36.738 --> 00:42:39.276 I think it's still appropriate that you get permission for that, 00:42:39.276 --> 00:42:40.822 though of course, you need to be able to remix 00:42:40.822 --> 00:42:43.619 in the way that we saw Soderberg remixed that video 00:42:43.635 --> 00:42:46.709 of Bush and Endless Love. 00:42:46.847 --> 00:42:49.324 The point here is that if you think about this, I'm talking about 00:42:49.324 --> 00:42:52.315 deregulating a significant space of culture, 00:42:52.361 --> 00:42:55.223 and focusing the regulation of copyright work and do some good. 00:42:55.223 --> 00:42:58.103 #4 It needs to be effective. And effective means 00:42:58.103 --> 00:43:00.972 it must actually work in getting artists paid. 00:43:01.033 --> 00:43:04.891 The current system does not work in getting artists paid. 00:43:04.891 --> 00:43:06.899 And #5 It needs to be realistic. 00:43:06.899 --> 00:43:12.485 Think about the problem of peer-to-peer, quote, "piracy" internationally, 00:43:12.978 --> 00:43:16.085 We've, for the last decade, been waging what is referred to 00:43:16.085 --> 00:43:19.878 as a war. My friend, the late Jack Valenti, former head of the 00:43:19.955 --> 00:43:22.627 Motion Picture Association of America used to refer to it as 00:43:22.627 --> 00:43:27.832 his own, quote, "terrorist war", where apparently the terrorists in this war 00:43:27.832 --> 00:43:30.288 are our children. 00:43:30.335 --> 00:43:33.574 Now this war has been a total failure. 00:43:33.574 --> 00:43:38.923 It has not achieved its objective of reducing copyrights sharing 00:43:38.923 --> 00:43:40.869 or illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. 00:43:40.930 --> 00:43:44.734 And I know the response of some to totally failed wars 00:43:44.734 --> 00:43:48.206 is to continue to wage that war forever, and ever more viciously, 00:43:48.237 --> 00:43:51.209 but I suggest we adopt the opposite response here. 00:43:51.209 --> 00:43:54.663 We sue for peace. We sue for peace in this war, 00:43:54.663 --> 00:43:57.477 and consider proposals that would give us the opportunity 00:43:57.477 --> 00:44:00.020 to achieve the objectives of copyright, 00:44:00.020 --> 00:44:01.336 without waging this war. 00:44:01.336 --> 00:44:05.008 So, compulsory licenses, voluntary collective licenses 00:44:05.008 --> 00:44:07.675 or the German Greens' suggestion of a cultural flat rate 00:44:07.675 --> 00:44:10.369 which would be collected and allocated to artists 00:44:10.369 --> 00:44:13.516 on the basis of the harm suffered because of P2P file-sharing, 00:44:13.516 --> 00:44:16.060 all of these are alternatives to waging a war 00:44:16.060 --> 00:44:20.197 to stop sharing, when sharing is of course at the core 00:44:20.197 --> 00:44:21.435 of the architecture of the Net, 00:44:21.435 --> 00:44:24.853 and all of them recognize that if we achieve 00:44:24.853 --> 00:44:29.852 that alternative, we don't need to block this system of sharing. 00:44:29.899 --> 00:44:33.962 Now, the thing to think about is, if we had had one of these alternatives 00:44:33.962 --> 00:44:37.797 10 years ago, what would the world look like today, 00:44:37.797 --> 00:44:38.835 how would it be different? 00:44:38.897 --> 00:44:41.220 Now one difference is, artists would get more money, 00:44:41.220 --> 00:44:42.705 they would have gotten more money, because 00:44:42.705 --> 00:44:44.829 while we have been waging war against artists [sic: "children", "pirates"?] 00:44:44.829 --> 00:44:47.688 artists haven't got anything, only lawyers have. 00:44:47.688 --> 00:44:49.435 Businesses would have had more competition, 00:44:49.435 --> 00:44:52.352 the rules would have been clear, we would have more companies 00:44:52.352 --> 00:44:54.298 than just Apple and Microsoft thinking out 00:44:54.298 --> 00:44:56.567 how they could exploit this new digital technologies. 00:44:56.628 --> 00:44:59.133 But most important to me, is, we wouldn't have a generation 00:44:59.133 --> 00:45:01.733 of criminals who have grown up being called criminals 00:45:01.733 --> 00:45:04.145 because they are technically pirates, according to 00:45:04.253 --> 00:45:06.230 this outdated copyright law. 00:45:06.522 --> 00:45:09.243 So these 5 objectives would go into the conception of what 00:45:09.243 --> 00:45:11.317 this Blue Skies commission should think about 00:45:11.317 --> 00:45:13.881 and I think it should think of this in a 5 year process 00:45:13.881 --> 00:45:17.184 talking about something not to into effect for 10 years. 00:45:17.184 --> 00:45:21.655 Think of it as a kind of Map for Berne II, but Bern II being 00:45:21.655 --> 00:45:25.354 a system that could work to achieve the objectives of copyright 00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:27.547 in a digital age. That's what the law should do. 00:45:27.639 --> 00:45:30.492 But most important right now is what we need to do. 00:45:30.492 --> 00:45:34.791 We, both in the context of business - so in the context of business, 00:45:34.791 --> 00:45:37.956 we need to think about how to better enable legal reuse 00:45:37.956 --> 00:45:39.225 of copyrighted material. 00:45:39.225 --> 00:45:42.933 And companies like Google and Microsoft's Bing 00:45:42.994 --> 00:45:44.356 need to do more here. 00:45:44.356 --> 00:45:46.959 We're in the age of remix, where writing is remix, 00:45:46.959 --> 00:45:49.942 where teachers tell students to go out to the web 00:45:49.942 --> 00:45:51.950 and gather as much content as you can in order to 00:45:51.950 --> 00:45:55.289 write a report about whatever it is they are assigning them 00:45:55.289 --> 00:45:56.358 to write reports about. 00:45:56.358 --> 00:45:59.570 That means Google and Bing need to help our kids 00:45:59.570 --> 00:46:02.508 do it legally, which they don't, right now. 00:46:02.508 --> 00:46:05.037 So for example, this extraordinary service, which Google 00:46:05.037 --> 00:46:07.121 gives you when you want to do an image search: 00:46:07.152 --> 00:46:10.124 let's say you search for an image, you do an image search on flowers, 00:46:10.124 --> 00:46:13.700 This, over here - I don't know if you play with this - 00:46:13.700 --> 00:46:16.158 is really extraordinary: you can then narrow the search 00:46:16.158 --> 00:46:17.750 on the basis of many of these categories, 00:46:17.750 --> 00:46:19.834 including like the color of the photographs. 00:46:19.880 --> 00:46:22.608 So you want pink flowers, there you can see all the pink flowers, 00:46:22.608 --> 00:46:23.816 just by clicking on the link. 00:46:23.862 --> 00:46:28.378 But why, in this extraction, don't we also have an option 00:46:28.378 --> 00:46:30.534 for something like this: show reusable? 00:46:30.596 --> 00:46:34.907 Show the content that is explicitly licensed to be reusable, 00:46:34.907 --> 00:46:37.439 because Google indexes Creative Commons licenses 00:46:37.439 --> 00:46:38.723 associated with these images. 00:46:38.723 --> 00:46:42.561 Why not make it on the surface easy to begin to filter out 00:46:42.608 --> 00:46:44.900 those that you can use with the permission of the author 00:46:44.946 --> 00:46:47.214 from those that presumptively require a lawyer? 00:46:47.214 --> 00:46:49.668 Same thing in the context of a site like YouTube. 00:46:49.668 --> 00:46:53.479 Why don't we enable more easily the signaling by the creator 00:46:53.479 --> 00:46:56.008 that others should be able to download and reuse content, 00:46:56.008 --> 00:46:59.786 not so much to redefine what Fair Use is - 00:46:59.786 --> 00:47:02.214 I still think there is a fair use claim even if there isn't 00:47:02.214 --> 00:47:05.625 permission given to re-use - but at least to encourage people 00:47:05.625 --> 00:47:08.105 to begin to signal that their freedom to share 00:47:08.151 --> 00:47:10.251 has been authorized by the author. 00:47:10.251 --> 00:47:14.749 And then in the academy, which I think we are speaking 00:47:14.749 --> 00:47:16.849 about here right now. 00:47:16.849 --> 00:47:19.282 We need to recognize in the academy, I think, 00:47:19.282 --> 00:47:24.077 an ethical obligation, much stronger than the ones Stallman spoke of 00:47:24.077 --> 00:47:26.572 in the context of software. An ethical obligation 00:47:26.572 --> 00:47:28.564 which is at the core of our mission. 00:47:28.595 --> 00:47:31.196 Our mission is universal access to knowledge. 00:47:31.196 --> 00:47:33.507 Universal access to knowledge: 00:47:33.538 --> 00:47:36.278 not American University access to knowledge, 00:47:36.340 --> 00:47:40.106 but universal access to knowledge in every part of the globe. 00:47:40.106 --> 00:47:43.106 And that obligation has certain entailments. 00:47:43.106 --> 00:47:48.614 Entailment #1 is that we need to keep this work free, 00:47:48.614 --> 00:47:50.767 where free means licensed freely. 00:47:50.767 --> 00:47:54.838 Now this needs to be part of an ethical point about what we do. 00:47:54.838 --> 00:47:58.942 It is resisted by people who say that archiving is enough. 00:47:58.973 --> 00:48:02.246 But that is wrong, I think. 00:48:02.246 --> 00:48:05.838 Archiving is not enough, because what it does is 00:48:05.838 --> 00:48:09.523 leave these rights out-there. And by leaving these rights our-there 00:48:09.523 --> 00:48:12.155 it encourages this architecture of closed access. 00:48:12.155 --> 00:48:16.175 It encourages models of access that block access 00:48:16.175 --> 00:48:17.613 to the non-elite around the world. 00:48:17.613 --> 00:48:23.536 And it discourages unplanned, unanticipated and "uncool" innovation. 00:48:23.536 --> 00:48:25.860 That's the thing that publishers would have said 00:48:25.891 --> 00:48:28.020 of Google Books, when Google Books had the idea 00:48:28.020 --> 00:48:30.679 to take all books published and put them on the Web. 00:48:30.725 --> 00:48:32.952 Right, publishers thought that was very uncool, 00:48:32.952 --> 00:48:35.468 but that's exactly the kind of innovation we need to encourage, 00:48:35.514 --> 00:48:37.537 and we know it won't be the publishers 00:48:37.537 --> 00:48:39.453 that do that kind of innovation. 00:48:39.499 --> 00:48:43.607 We don't need for our work, exclusivity. 00:48:43.607 --> 00:48:46.877 And we shouldn't practice, with our work, exclusivity. 00:48:46.877 --> 00:48:51.049 And we should name those who do, wrong. 00:48:51.049 --> 00:48:56.965 Those who do are inconsistent with the ethic of our work. 00:48:56.965 --> 00:49:00.342 Now how do we do that? I think we do that by exercising leadership, 00:49:00.403 --> 00:49:04.679 leadership by those who can afford to take the lead, 00:49:04.679 --> 00:49:08.727 the senior academics, those with tenure, those who can say, 00:49:08.742 --> 00:49:11.819 on committees granting tenure, that it doesn't matter 00:49:11.819 --> 00:49:14.458 that you didn't publish in the most prestigious journal 00:49:14.458 --> 00:49:17.970 if that journal is not Open Access. 00:49:17.970 --> 00:49:21.716 People who can begin to help redefine what access to knowledge is, 00:49:21.716 --> 00:49:24.752 by supporting Open Access and respecting Open Access 00:49:24.752 --> 00:49:27.760 and encouraging Open Access. 00:49:27.760 --> 00:49:30.222 Now, I'm really honored and happy to be able to talk about this 00:49:30.222 --> 00:49:34.426 here, where you of course gave us the Web, 00:49:34.426 --> 00:49:38.686 and CERN has taken the lead in supporting Open Access 00:49:38.686 --> 00:49:41.621 in a crucial space of physics. 00:49:41.621 --> 00:49:45.822 And the work that you are doing right now will have a dramatic effect 00:49:45.822 --> 00:49:49.662 on changing the debate on science across the globe. 00:49:49.662 --> 00:49:51.788 But what we need to do is to think about 00:49:51.788 --> 00:49:55.935 how to leverage this leadership into leadership for the globe, 00:49:55.935 --> 00:50:02.442 to benefit this area of the globe as much as this area of the globe. 00:50:02.442 --> 00:50:04.219 Thank you very much. 00:50:04.219 --> 00:50:06.664 (applause) 00:50:06.664 --> 00:50:08.241 [credits for Flickr photos] 00:50:08.241 --> 00:50:15.403 [This work licensed: CC-BY] 00:50:15.464 --> 00:50:19.000 Subtitles: universalsubtitles.org/videos/jD5TB2eebD5d/