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Lawrence Lessig: So I want to start with the words of Jessica Litman

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who in 1994 wrote this in an article titled

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"The Exclusive Right to Read".

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Jessica wrote: "At the turn of the century,

0:00:16.000,0:00:19.000
U.S: copyright law was technical, inconsistent

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and difficult to understand,

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but it didn't apply to very many people or very many things."

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"If one were an author or publisher of books.

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maps, charts, paintings, sculpture, photographs or sheet music,

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a playwright or producer of plays, or a printer,

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the copyright law bore on one's business."

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"Booksellers, piano-roll and phonograph record publishers, motion picture producers,

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musicians, scholars, members of Congress, and ordinary citizens

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however could go about their business without ever

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encountering a copyright problem."

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"90 years later, the U.S: © law is even more technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand;

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more importantly, it touches everone and everything."

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"Technology, heedless of law, has developed modes

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that insert multiple acts of reproduction and transmission

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- potentially actionable events under the © statute - into commonplace daily transactions.

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"Most of us can no longer spend even an hour without colliding with the © law."

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In 1906, this man, John Philip Souza, traveled to this place, the US Congress,

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to talk about this technology, which he called the "talking machines".

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Souza was not a fan of the talking machines.

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This is what he had to say: "These talking machines are going to ruin

0:02:01.000,0:02:04.000
the artistic development of music in this country.

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When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings

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you would find youg people together, singing the songs of the day or the old songs.

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Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day.

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We will not have a vocal chord left" Souza said

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"The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution,

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as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."

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Now this is the picture I want you to focus on, this picture of young people together

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singing the songs of the day or the old songs.

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This is a picture of cultureP We could call it, using modern computer terminology,

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a kind of read-write culture.

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It's a culture where people participate in the creation and re-creation of their culture,

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in that sense, it's read-write. And Souza's fear was that we'd lose the capacity

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to engage in this read-write creativity because of these "infernal machines".

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They would take it away, displace it, and in its place we'd have the opposite

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of read-write creativity, what we could call, using modern computer terminology,

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a kind of read-only culture.

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A culture where creativity is consumed, but the consumer is not a creator.

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A culture, in this sense, that's top-down,

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where the vocal cords of the millions of ordinary people have been lost.

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Now if you look back at culture in the 20th century

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at least in what we call "the developed world",

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it's hard not to conclude that John Philip Souza was right.

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Never before in the history of human culture

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had its production become as concentrated.

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Never before had it become as professionalized.

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Never before had the creativity of ordinary creators been as effectively displaced

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and displaced, as he said, because of these "Infernal machines".

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A technology - a technology of broadcasting and vinyl records

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had produced this passive, consuming culture.

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It's a technology that enabled efficient consumption

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- what we could call "reading" - but inefficient at least what we'd call

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amateur production - what I want to call "writing".

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It was a great culture for listening, not so great technology for speaking;

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a great technology for writing, not a great technology for democratic creation.

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The 20th century was this unique century in the history of human culture

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where culture had become "read only",

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against a background of read/write creativity since the beginning of human culture.

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OK, that's here our introduction to an argument I want to make here today.

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And the argument invokes an idea that my friend and colleague Jamie Boyle

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has been speaking of for more than a decade.

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So this Idea is that we recognize first that creativity happens within an ecology.

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An ecology, an environment that sets the conditions of exchange.

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And number 2 these ecologies are importantly different.

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There are different ecologies of creativity.

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Some of these ecologies have money at the core

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Others don't have money at the core.

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And some have money and practices that don't depend upon money

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right at the core. They are different ecologies of creativity.

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So think about the professional ecologies of creativity,

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ecologies that the Beatles or Dylan or John Philip Souza created for.

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For these ecologies the control of the creativity is imposrtant

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to assure the necessary compensation that the artist needs

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to create the incentives for that artist to create.

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In these professional ecologies, these ecologies depend upon

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an effective and efficient system of copyright.

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But in what we could call an amateur ecology of creativity

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by which I don't mean amateurish, In stead I mean an ecology

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where the creator creates for the love of the creativity

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and not for the money. In that kind of ecology,

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an ecology that lives within what we could call, following Yochai Benkler,

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the sharing economy. That's the economy that children live within

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or friends live within, or lovers live within -

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in those kinds of economies, for these -

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people don't use money to express value

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and to set the terms of their exchange.

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Indeed if you introduced money into those sharing economies,

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you would radically change the character of those economies.

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So imagine friends, inviting the other for lunch the following week

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and the answer is "Sure, how about for 50 bucks?"

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Or imagine dropping money right in the middle of this kind of relarionship

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we radically transform it into something very different.

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The point is to recognize how creativity in many contexts,

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in the context Souza was romanticizing,

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is a creativity that exists outside of an economy of cash.

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In this sense, this amateur ecology depends not upon control

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and copyright, but instead depends upon this opportunity for free use and sharing.

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And then finally, think about the scientific ecology

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of creativity, of the scientist, or the educator, or the scholar.

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There's a very interesting picture here, this 16th century scholar

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notice the kind of guilty look on his face. And look down

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and see exactly what he's doing: he's copying from that book.

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He's just a pirate from long ago this scholar here, right?

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because of course, scholarship is and has always been this activity

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of creating within a mixed economy of free and paid

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A creator here has a love for his or her creativity,

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a love that exceeds how much she or he is paid.

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But it's that economy that defines the mixed ecology of scientific knowledge.

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This ecology depends not upon exclusive control, but

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but both on free and fair use of creative work that is built upon

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and then spread. Now, the key here is to recognize that these ecologies

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coexist. They complement each other.

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And here is the critical point: a copyright system must support

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each of these separate ecologies. It's not enough for it to support one

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and destroy the others. It must support each of them, it must

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support the professional ecology of creativity,

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through adequate and sufficient incentives.

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But it must also support the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity

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through essential freedoms that they depend upon.

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Or again, more graphically, copyright needs to do two things, not just one.

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It needs to provide the incentives that the professionals

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need by protecting the freedoms that the amateur and scientific creations need.

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So these ecologies change. Technologies change them,

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technologies of broadcasting and vinyl changed them

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in a way that Souza feared. Government change them.

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Think about the Chinese government's relationship

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to the Tibetan cultural heritage.

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Economics changes them. So in the 18th century opera was king

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and singers were troubadours. In the 20th century economics had made

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the troubadours kings and opera fell into increasing disuse.

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These ecologies change, and interestingly and obviously the Internet

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has changed them dramatically, has changed professional

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ecologies of creativity through technologies like Napster

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or Apple and their iTunes music store, producing radically

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new markets, and radical increase in the diversity of culture that is accessible,

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the opportunity to buy and consume culture produced

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anywhere and in any form, is the opportunity that this digital culture

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for this form of creativity has produced.

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In the scientific context,we've seen a dramatic change

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in the way in which scientific knowledge gets produced and shared

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through extraordinary listservs that facilitate immediate

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spread of knowledge in certain fields to free publications

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like the Public library of science, which assures free access

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to the underlying work perpetually, to an increasing spread of

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even blog structures producing a radical new opportunity

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to spread these ideas broadly. And in the amateur culture,

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we've seen an explosion through platforms such as YouTube

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of what I want to call a kind of call and response culture

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that has revived thre read/write culture fundamentally.

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So I want to give you some examples of this,

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So we just have a clear sense of what I'm talking about.

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Everybody knows this -

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(music) piece of work by Pachelbel, canon in D?

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A teenager, sitting in his room, [name not understood], remixed it then.

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(remixed music)

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79 million people have watched this remix

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and more importantly for me, as 79 million people have watched it,

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more than 2600 people have reinterpreted it,like this

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writing their own version for other people to view from YouTube.

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Or here's another example- This video:

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(video)

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that inspired somebody to produce this video:

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which then inspired somebody to produce this video:

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Here is one more example.So everybody should know the Brad Pack

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which was a collection of actors who performed first in the Breakfast Club

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And the Brad Pack was an inspiration to a certain culture,

0:14:03.000,0:14:09.000
certain generation. And the song Listomania, produced by the group Phoenix

0:14:09.000,0:14:14.000
has become a certain cultural icon to a generation.

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So somebody decided they would take the video from

0:14:17.000,0:14:23.000
the Breakfast Club and remix it and create a music video

0:14:23.000,0:14:26.000
for Listomania. And this is what they produced:

0:14:35.000,0:14:42.000
So recognize, this is just re-editing the underlying movements, setting it to music

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And then somebody got the idea that they ought to create (...) of exactly this. So

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Brooklyn decided he would be first,

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And of course not to be outdone, San Francisco decided it would be next

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And another (...) scores of these on YouTube, from cities around the world (?)

0:16:06.000,0:16:11.000
as people reinterpret the same original scores and create

0:16:11.000,0:16:16.000
in this amateur ecology of creativity, their own version.

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which they then share and inspire others to create (...)

0:16:20.000,0:16:23.000
This is what I refer to as remix. But what I want you to recognize

0:16:23.000,0:16:27.000
is that it is what Souza was romanticizing

0:16:27.000,0:16:31.000
when he spoke of young people getting together and singing the songs

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of the day or the old songs. But today, that getting together

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is not in the backyard, it is through this free digital platform

0:16:39.000,0:16:42.000
that encourages people from around the world to participate

0:16:42.000,0:16:46.000
in this act of cultural reinterpretation and share it

0:16:46.000,0:16:51.000
in an ecology that does not trade on money, but an ecology

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that instead trades upon this activity of sharing.

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The internet has changed these 3 ecologies of creativity.

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But the question that this organisation needs to address is,

0:17:02.000,0:17:07.000
has copyright kept up with the change in these ecologies?

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Has it kept up with the changes as they have affected

0:17:11.000,0:17:16.000
these 3 ecologies? Now my own view of the answer to this question

0:17:16.000,0:17:18.000
is quite simple: it has not

0:17:18.000,0:17:24.000
It has failed. It has failed to assure the adequate incentives

0:17:24.000,0:17:28.000
in the professional culture, and it has failed to protect

0:17:28.000,0:17:33.000
the necessary freedoms in the amateur and critical or scientific culture.

0:17:33.000,0:17:38.000
It has failed at both of its objectives and its failure is not

0:17:38.000,0:17:45.000
an accident. Its failure is an implication of the architecture

0:17:45.000,0:17:47.000
of copyright as we inherited it.

0:17:47.000,0:17:52.000
This architecture makes no sense in the context of the digital environment.

0:17:52.000,0:17:57.000
The architecture, which triggers the application of copyright law

0:17:57.000,0:18:00.000
upon the production of a copy, in a digital environment

0:18:00.000,0:18:07.000
makes no sense. It regulates too much, and it regulates too poorly.

0:18:07.000,0:18:10.000
So think of a simple example of a book in physical space.

0:18:10.000,0:18:13.000
If these are all the uses of a book in physical space,

0:18:13.000,0:18:17.000
an important set of these uses are just technically unregulated

0:18:17.000,0:18:20.000
by the law of copyright in physical in physical space.

0:18:20.000,0:18:22.000
So to read a book is not a fair use of the book,

0:18:22.000,0:18:26.000
it's a free use of the book, because to read a book is not to produce a copy.

0:18:26.000,0:18:29.000
To give someone a book is not a fair use of the book,

0:18:29.000,0:18:32.000
it's a free use of the book, because to give someone a book is not to produce a copy.

0:18:32.000,0:18:35.000
To sell a book is explicitly exempted from the reach of © law

0:18:35.000,0:18:38.000
in many jurisdictions, including the United States,

0:18:38.000,0:18:40.000
because to sell a book is not to produce a copy.

0:18:40.000,0:18:43.000
In no jurisdiction in the world is sleeping on a book a regulated act

0:18:43.000,0:18:45.000
because to sleep on a book is not to produce a copy.

0:18:45.000,0:18:52.000
These unregulated acts are then balanced by a set of necessary regulated acts,

0:18:52.000,0:18:56.000
necessary to create the proper incentives to produce great new works.

0:18:56.000,0:19:00.000
And then in the American tradition, there is a thin sliver of exceptions,

0:19:00.000,0:19:03.000
acts that otherwise would have been regulated by the law

0:19:03.000,0:19:06.000
but which the law says are to remain free

0:19:06.000,0:19:09.000
so that culture can build upon those creative works

0:19:09.000,0:19:12.000
in a way unhampered by the law. Enter the internet,

0:19:12.000,0:19:16.000
where because a digital platform, every single use

0:19:17.000,0:19:22.000
produces a copy. And we go from this balance of unregulated and regulated

0:19:22.000,0:19:27.000
and fair uses, to a presumptively regulated use for every single use,

0:19:27.000,0:19:30.000
merely because the platform through which we get

0:19:30.000,0:19:33.000
access to our culture has changed. This is the consquence

0:19:33.000,0:19:40.000
of an architecture, an architecture of copyright law, an architecture of digital technologies.

0:19:40.000,0:19:42.000
It is that architecture that produced what Jessica spoke of

0:19:42.000,0:19:46.000
when she said, "a world where we can't even go for an hour

0:19:46.000,0:19:51.000
without colliding with copyright law", and the collision is a problem

0:19:51.000,0:19:56.000
not with some generation that can't learn to respect the rules,

0:19:56.000,0:20:01.000
it is a problem in the design of this system of regulation.

0:20:03.000,0:20:11.000
Now 15 years into this revolution, where we're waging war

0:20:11.000,0:20:14.000
- well, in the US we waged many wars, but the particular war here is the

0:20:14.000,0:20:20.000
copyright wars - against the implications of this new technology,

0:20:20.000,0:20:23.000
a war which my friend, the late Jack Valenti, former head of the

0:20:23.000,0:20:27.000
Motion Pictures Association of America refered to as

0:20:27.000,0:20:33.000
as his own "terrorist war", where apparently the terrorists in this war

0:20:33.000,0:20:42.000
are our children, 15 years into this terrorist war, we need finally to recognize

0:20:42.000,0:20:46.000
the failing, not of our kids, but of this architecture.

0:20:46.000,0:20:53.000
And we need to fix it. So, how would we fix it?

0:20:53.000,0:20:58.000
Well, I fling myself across the Atlantic to come to WIPO to say that

0:20:58.000,0:21:03.000
WIPO must lead in this reform. And the reform has both

0:21:03.000,0:21:07.000
a short term and a long term component.. In the short term,

0:21:07.000,0:21:13.000
WIPO should be actively encouraging systems of voluntary licensing

0:21:13.000,0:21:21.000
that create a better balance between the traditional ecologies

0:21:21.000,0:21:24.000
of cultural production in the professional space

0:21:24.000,0:21:29.000
and the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity

0:21:29.000,0:21:32.000
that I've also identified. That was the objective behind the project

0:21:32.000,0:21:36.000
that I helped to found, called the Creative Commons project,

0:21:36.000,0:21:41.000
which was to design a simple way for authors and copyright owners

0:21:41.000,0:21:45.000
to mark their content with the freedoms that they intended it to carry.

0:21:45.000,0:21:50.000
So rather than the default of All rights reserved, this was a Some rights reserved model

0:21:50.000,0:21:53.000
reserving certain rights to the copyright owner,

0:21:53.000,0:21:58.000
and releasing certain rights to the public.. You obtain this license

0:21:58.000,0:22:01.000
by going to our site, or to a numberr of sites that have implemented it,

0:22:01.000,0:22:06.000
independently, and selecting the uses or freedoms you'd like to allow.

0:22:06.000,0:22:09.000
Would you like to allow others to make commercial use of your work?

0:22:09.000,0:22:12.000
Do you want to allow others to make modifications, and if they make modifications,

0:22:12.000,0:22:16.000
do you want to require that they release their modified work

0:22:16.000,0:22:19.000
under a similar license, what we call "share alike".

0:22:19.000,0:22:23.000
Those choices produce a license. And the thing to recognize is

0:22:23.000,0:22:28.000
the way that these different licenses support these different ecologies

0:22:28.000,0:22:33.000
differently. So the simplest and freest license, the attribution-only license,

0:22:33.000,0:22:37.000
supports each of these ecologies, as it produces free resources

0:22:37.000,0:22:40.000
that these ecologies can draw upon to do whatever

0:22:40.000,0:22:44.000
each within these ecologies wants. The non commercial license

0:22:44.000,0:22:49.000
however, supports the amateur ecology of creativity,

0:22:49.000,0:22:53.000
allowing people to know that their work will be used by others

0:22:53.000,0:22:58.000
according to the rules of sharing, not to the rules of buying and selling.

0:22:58.000,0:23:04.000
And we've added, in this non commercial space, a - what we call a CC+ protocol

0:23:04.000,0:23:10.000
that allows an option to click through to license for commercial purposes

0:23:10.000,0:23:14.000
work that has been released to the world under non commercial terms.

0:23:14.000,0:23:18.000
So you can release your photograph to be used and shared by people

0:23:18.000,0:23:22.000
in a non commercial way, but have a simple transaction costfree way

0:23:22.000,0:23:27.000
to link back to a licensing organization that could license the very same work

0:23:27.000,0:23:32.000
for commercial purposes. The share alike license is designed to facilitate

0:23:32.000,0:23:35.000
collaboration in both the professional and in amateur culture.

0:23:35.000,0:23:40.000
This was the inspiration we took from the GNU-Linux operating system

0:23:40.000,0:23:44.000
which of course is licensed under a similar copyleft license

0:23:44.000,0:23:48.000
permitting commercial as well as non commercial developments

0:23:48.000,0:23:52.000
and we've extended that to culture. And then just this year, we have released

0:23:52.000,0:23:56.000
a set of protocols to facilitate marking work that's in the public domain

0:23:56.000,0:24:01.000
or waiving rights that otherwise might exist, so that work can support

0:24:01.000,0:24:04.000
once again each of these different ecologies in different ways.

0:24:04.000,0:24:08.000
Last year was one of the most important years in the history of this organization.

0:24:08.000,0:24:13.000
Al Jazeera announced that a huge archive of video material

0:24:13.000,0:24:16.000
from the struggles in the Middle East would be available under a

0:24:16.000,0:24:21.000
Attribution license only, meaning you can take their raw footage

0:24:21.000,0:24:26.000
and use it in your film, or on your television station, or in your commercial applications,

0:24:26.000,0:24:29.000
so long as you simply give attribution back to Al Jazeera

0:24:29.000,0:24:33.000
The White House released its content under a Creative Commons license,

0:24:33.000,0:24:37.000
Wikipedia increased - adopted the Creative Commons licenses,

0:24:37.000,0:24:41.000
as the infrastructure for all of its licensed material.

0:24:41.000,0:24:44.000
So that last year, we saw the biggest bump in the growth of the Creative Commons

0:24:44.000,0:24:51.000
license projects since its inception, now marking at least 350 million objects on the web.

0:24:51.000,0:24:56.000
Now my view is, organizations like WIPO, and WIPO in particular

0:24:56.000,0:25:00.000
need to embrace this architecture, not just Creative Commons

0:25:00.000,0:25:06.000
but any of these architectures that import and assert the value of

0:25:06.000,0:25:10.000
copyright licenses. Of course, the Creative Commons is

0:25:10.000,0:25:13.000
not an alternative to copyright, it builds on copyright.

0:25:13.000,0:25:18.000
It's a simple, valid and traditional license that had as its primary intent

0:25:18.000,0:25:23.000
supporting of these ecologies, of creativity.

0:25:23.000,0:25:29.000
But in supporting these ecologies of creativity, it also supports a cross-over

0:25:29.000,0:25:34.000
into the professional ecologies of creativity. And these licenses

0:25:34.000,0:25:38.000
are valid and enforceable, as we just discovered this week, in a Belgian court,

0:25:38.000,0:25:46.000
which gave this band a 4500 Euro award, a damages award, because their

0:25:46.000,0:25:49.000
because their content was used in a way inconsistent with the Creative Commons license

0:25:49.000,0:25:55.000
that it was released under, so that it protects the author to assure that their work

0:25:55.000,0:26:01.000
is used in the way they intended, and keeps the copyright enforcement mechanism

0:26:01.000,0:26:04.000
open for those who violate or go beyond those terms.

0:26:04.000,0:26:08.000
Now, my view is that these voluntary systems are not enough.

0:26:08.000,0:26:12.000
In addition to the voluntary systems, we are going to need changes

0:26:12.000,0:26:16.000
in law, and this is where there's a longer term change that's required.

0:26:16.000,0:26:21.000
And in my view, once again, WIPO has to lead this longer term change.

0:26:21.000,0:26:26.000
And I want to very strongly endorse the suggestion that has been made

0:26:26.000,0:26:32.000
by the Director General, that in the context of this longer term inquiry,

0:26:32.000,0:26:36.000
WIPO needs to support something like a Blue Sky commission,

0:26:36.000,0:26:42.000
a group that has the freedom to think about what architecture for copyright makes sense

0:26:42.000,0:26:47.000
in the digital age, freed from the current implementation of copyright

0:26:47.000,0:26:52.000
which we inherited from the analog stage of culture.

0:26:52.000,0:26:58.000
Now my own view is that this conclusion of this commission will have certain recommendations

0:26:58.000,0:27:03.000
for elements to any copyright system: They'll want that the system be simple.

0:27:03.000,0:27:06.000
If copyright is going to regulate 15-year olds, it must be something that 15-year olds

0:27:06.000,0:27:16.000
can understand. Right now, they don't. Indeed no one understands the full reach or complexity of copyright law.

0:27:16.000,0:27:23.000
I've been studying it intensely for 15 years and still I make fundamental and obvious mistakes.

0:27:23.000,0:27:27.000
It needs to be re-made to make it simple. And it can be re-made

0:27:27.000,0:27:31.000
to be made simple, if that were an objective of the reform.

0:27:31.000,0:27:36.000
Number 2, it needs to be efficient. Copyright is a property system.

0:27:36.000,0:27:40.000
But it is also the most inefficient property system known to man.

0:27:40.000,0:27:46.000
The simplest idea of a property system, to know who owns what,

0:27:46.000,0:27:49.000
Under the current system. we can't know who owns what

0:27:49.000,0:27:54.000
because the system has been architected to give up the infrastructure necessary

0:27:54.000,0:28:01.000
to know who owns what. And the only remedy to address this problem is to go forward

0:28:01.000,0:28:06.000
to a modern version of formalities, not at the moment of creation,

0:28:06.000,0:28:11.000
but at least to maintain the rights under copyright. And in this respect, I'm happy to

0:28:11.000,0:28:18.000
acknowledge that the RIAA and I agree about the importance of formalities in a digital architecture

0:28:18.000,0:28:23.000
for copyright in the 21st century. They have expressly endorsed the idea

0:28:23.000,0:28:27.000
of considering formalities as a way to deal with efficiency of copyright

0:28:27.000,0:28:29.000
and I think that suggestion is absolutely right.

0:28:29.000,0:28:35.000
Number 3: the law has to be targeted. It means to regulate selectively.

0:28:35.000,0:28:41.000
So if we think about the difference between taking whole copies of another person's work,

0:28:41.000,0:28:45.000
and remixing that work, and the difference between the professional and the amateur

0:28:45.000,0:28:50.000
I apologize, I'm an academic, I can't help but thinking in matrix like this,

0:28:51.000,0:28:55.000
we have a matrix like this. And copyright now presumes to regulate all of these

0:28:55.000,0:29:01.000
spaces. But that presumption makes no sense. Copyright, of course, needs to regulate

0:29:01.000,0:29:08.000
effectively and efficiently, to stop professionals from pirating copies of other people's

0:29:08.000,0:29:13.000
copyrighted work. That needs to be regulated as the core area

0:29:13.000,0:29:19.000
of copyright's regulation. But just as obviously, amateurs' remixing other people's work

0:29:19.000,0:29:23.000
should be free of copyright's regulation. Not fair use, but free use.

0:29:23.000,0:29:28.000
There should be a presumption that such use is outside of the reach of copyright,

0:29:28.000,0:29:34.000
and that presumption should guide and encourage this amateur building upon

0:29:34.000,0:29:39.000
our cultural past. And then in the middle there are cases that are more mixed and more complicated,

0:29:39.000,0:29:45.000
where the law needs to carefully figure out how to assure that the incentives are protected

0:29:45.000,0:29:50.000
while the freedoms are assured. But the point about this model is to see

0:29:50.000,0:29:54.000
that the objective needs to be, to deregulate a significant space of culture

0:29:54.000,0:30:00.000
relative to the current architecture of copyright and to focus regulation where it can do some good.

0:30:00.000,0:30:04.000
Number 4 the law must be effective, it must actually work,

0:30:04.000,0:30:11.000
in the sense of it getting artists paid, and as any artist will tell you, the current system of copyright

0:30:11.000,0:30:14.000
doesn't actually do that well.

0:30:14.000,0:30:19.000
And finally number 5: it needs to be realistic about the capacity of law

0:30:19.000,0:30:23.000
to regulate human behavior. If you think about the problem of P2P

0:30:23.000,0:30:28.000
file-sharing internationally; what people refer to as "piracy"

0:30:28.000,0:30:35.000
well, just after a decade into this war, a war which has totally failed.

0:30:35.000,0:30:39.000
The objective has been to eliminate copyright "piracy".

0:30:39.000,0:30:44.000
Now I know the response of some to a totally failed war, maybe

0:30:44.000,0:30:49.000
some from my part of the world, is to continue to wage an ever more effective war

0:30:49.000,0:30:54.000
against the enemy, to up the stakes, to punish more vigorously

0:30:54.000,0:30:58.000
to win the war. My suggestion is we adopt the opposite response.

0:30:58.000,0:31:04.000
that we find a way to sue for peace here, and adopt proposals

0:31:04.000,0:31:07.000
where the compulsory licenses are voluntary collective licenses

0:31:07.000,0:31:12.000
which achieve the objectives of copyright to compensate artists

0:31:13.000,0:31:19.000
without achieving the insufficient objectives that the current regime has done.

0:31:19.000,0:31:26.000
And we should recognize that if we had had those systems in place a decade ago,

0:31:26.000,0:31:31.000
when they were first suggested by people suggesting changes to the existing regime

0:31:31.000,0:31:35.000
then over the last decade, artists would have received more money

0:31:35.000,0:31:40.000
then they did under the current system, because under the current system, P2P file-sharing

0:31:40.000,0:31:45.000
rewards nobody except the lawyers suing to stop P2P file sharing.

0:31:45.000,0:31:49.000
Businesses would have seen more competition, as more would have been encouraged to engage

0:31:49.000,0:31:55.000
in a behavior that built upon this kind of creative use, because the rules would have been clearer

0:31:55.000,0:32:01.000
but to me, the most important feature, as a father of three young children,

0:32:01.000,0:32:05.000
is that we would not have had a generation of criminals that have grown up

0:32:05.000,0:32:09.000
being told by us that they are criminals and internalizing the idea

0:32:09.000,0:32:13.000
that they are criminals and living life according to that internalized idea.

0:32:13.000,0:32:18.000
The objective of this Blue Sky commission will be to launch at least a 5-year process

0:32:18.000,0:32:23.000
to map what we could think of as Bern 2, or I would encourage you to come to Boston

0:32:23.000,0:32:27.000
and do it in Boston as Boston 1, but they could begin to think about a system

0:32:27.000,0:32:33.000
here that could work in the context of this digital culture. Now let me end with just one more

0:32:33.000,0:32:38.000
reflection. So I was once asked to come participate in an event here,

0:32:38.000,0:32:43.000
at the Association of the Bar of the city of New York. Bill Patry, who I think is going to speak

0:32:43.000,0:32:50.000
later, was at this event with me. The room for this event is this beautiful room

0:32:50.000,0:32:55.000
with these red velvet drapes and this red carpet. And the event was packed

0:32:55.000,0:32:59.000
with a wide range of people, from artists and creators and at least some lawyers

0:32:59.000,0:33:08.000
all eager to learn how the system of fair use could support their own form of digital creativity.

0:33:08.000,0:33:15.000
In American law, fair use has four components, four elements, and so the organizers of this event

0:33:15.000,0:33:20.000
decided they would ask 4 lawyers to speak for 15 minutes on each of these 4 elements.

0:33:20.000,0:33:25.000
And the theory was, after an hour, the audience would understand the law of fair use

0:33:25.000,0:33:30.000
and go out and create consistent with the law. But as I sat there and I looked out at the audience

0:33:30.000,0:33:35.000
the reaction after about an hour was more like this. And that reaction

0:33:35.000,0:33:41.000
lead me to a kind of daydreaming, which was, as I looked out at this room, I began to wonder

0:33:41.000,0:33:46.000
what it reminded me of. Because I knew there was something that room reminded me of

0:33:46.000,0:33:51.000
with its colors and its drama. And I realized that it reminded me of something I used to do

0:33:51.000,0:33:56.000
as a kid. Just after college I spent a long time traveling through this part of the world

0:33:56.000,0:34:03.000
and focused on this system of government. And I thought, as I was sitting there

0:34:03.000,0:34:07.000
looking out in the room, I began to have a daydream about when was it, in the history

0:34:07.000,0:34:13.000
of the Soviet system, that you could have convinced members of the Politburo

0:34:13.000,0:34:18.000
that the system had failed. When, in history? I mean 1976 was way too early:

0:34:18.000,0:34:23.000
It was puttering along and working pretty well in 1976. 1989 was too late: if they didn't

0:34:23.000,0:34:27.000
get it by 1989, they were never going to get it, right? So when was it, between

0:34:27.000,0:34:31.000
1976 and 1989 that they would have gotten it? And more importantly

0:34:31.000,0:34:36.000
what could you have said to them to convince them that this romantic idea that

0:34:36.000,0:34:41.000
they had grown up with had crashed and burnt, and to continue with the Soviet system was

0:34:41.000,0:34:49.000
to betray a certain kind of insanity? Because, as I listened to this debate among lawyers,

0:34:49.000,0:34:54.000
at least those of us in the United States, who engage in this debate

0:34:54.000,0:34:58.000
lawyers who insist that nothing has changed, the same rules apply,

0:34:58.000,0:35:02.000
it's the pirates who are the deviants - they might be right about that - but it's the pirates

0:35:02.000,0:35:09.000
who are the deviants, I begin to believe that it is we who are insane, here.

0:35:09.000,0:35:14.000
The existing system of copyright could never work

0:35:14.000,0:35:20.000
in the digital architecture of the internet. Either it will force people to stop creating, or

0:35:20.000,0:35:25.000
it will force a revolution. And both options, in my view, are not acceptable.

0:35:25.000,0:35:33.000
We, especially here, need to recognize, there is a growing copyright abolitionist movement out there.

0:35:33.000,0:35:38.000
People who believe that copyright might have been a good idea for other centuries

0:35:38.000,0:35:44.000
it makes no sense in the modern era. I am against abolitionism.

0:35:44.000,0:35:49.000
In this sense, I feel more like Gorbachov than I feel like Yeltsin

0:35:49.000,0:35:53.000
Right, I feel like an old communist who's just trying to preserve this system

0:35:53.000,0:36:00.000
in a new era. And I wage this war against these two extremisms. Because both extremisms

0:36:00.000,0:36:05.000
are going to lead to the destruction of the core value of copyright.

0:36:05.000,0:36:12.000
Now if and only if, in my view, WIPO leads in this debate, will we have the chance

0:36:12.000,0:36:17.000
to avoid these extremisms. Now most people around the world don't care

0:36:17.000,0:36:22.000
about preserving copyright. So one last plea, if you are in that camp,

0:36:22.000,0:36:27.000
not likely if you're here, but one last plea: we all need to recognize

0:36:27.000,0:36:31.000
we're not going to kill these technologies. We can only criminalize them.

0:36:31.000,0:36:37.000
We're not going to stop our kids from being creative in a way that I at least was not creative

0:36:37.000,0:36:41.000
as I grew up in the last century, we can only drive their creativity underground.

0:36:41.000,0:36:46.000
We're not going to make the passive. We can only make the pirates.

0:36:46.000,0:36:52.000
And the question we have to ask is whether that is good for free societies.

0:36:52.000,0:36:58.000
In America, kids live in an age of prohibition. All sorts of activities in their lives are

0:36:58.000,0:37:03.000
technically against the law, and they live life against the law.

0:37:03.000,0:37:11.000
But that way of living life is corrosive and corrupting of the rule of law

0:37:11.000,0:37:18.000
in a democracy. This entity needs to lead the copyright system out

0:37:18.000,0:37:25.000
of that regime of corrupting law violations. And I urge, after 15 years

0:37:25.000,0:37:29.000
that we at least start that process now. Thank you very much.

0:37:29.000,0:37:39.000
(applause)