1
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,000
Lawrence Lessig: So I want to start with the words of Jessica Litman

2
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000
who in 1994 wrote this in an article titled

3
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000
"The Exclusive Right to Read".

4
00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:16,000
Jessica wrote: "At the turn of the century,

5
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:19,000
U.S: copyright law was technical, inconsistent

6
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:22,000
and difficult to understand,

7
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:26,000
but it didn't apply to very many people or very many things."

8
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:30,000
"If one were an author or publisher of books.

9
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000
maps, charts, paintings, sculpture, photographs or sheet music,

10
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:35,000
a playwright or producer of plays, or a printer,

11
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000
the copyright law bore on one's business."

12
00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:46,000
"Booksellers, piano-roll and phonograph record publishers, motion picture producers,

13
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:50,000
musicians, scholars, members of Congress, and ordinary citizens

14
00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:53,000
however could go about their business without ever

15
00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:56,000
encountering a copyright problem."

16
00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:05,000
"90 years later, the U.S: © law is even more technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand;

17
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:10,000
more importantly, it touches everone and everything."

18
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:16,000
"Technology, heedless of law, has developed modes

19
00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:20,000
that insert multiple acts of reproduction and transmission

20
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:28,000
- potentially actionable events under the © statute - into commonplace daily transactions.

21
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:36,000
"Most of us can no longer spend even an hour without colliding with the © law."

22
00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:47,000
In 1906, this man, John Philip Souza, traveled to this place, the US Congress,

23
00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:51,000
to talk about this technology, which he called the "talking machines".

24
00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:56,000
Souza was not a fan of the talking machines.

25
00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:01,000
This is what he had to say: "These talking machines are going to ruin

26
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:04,000
the artistic development of music in this country.

27
00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:08,000
When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings

28
00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:12,000
you would find youg people together, singing the songs of the day or the old songs.

29
00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:18,000
Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day.

30
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:22,000
We will not have a vocal chord left" Souza said

31
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:25,000
"The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution,

32
00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:30,000
as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."

33
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:35,000
Now this is the picture I want you to focus on, this picture of young people together

34
00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:38,000
singing the songs of the day or the old songs.

35
00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:43,000
This is a picture of cultureP We could call it, using modern computer terminology,

36
00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:46,000
a kind of read-write culture.

37
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:52,000
It's a culture where people participate in the creation and re-creation of their culture,

38
00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:58,000
in that sense, it's read-write. And Souza's fear was that we'd lose the capacity

39
00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:03,000
to engage in this read-write creativity because of these "infernal machines".

40
00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:08,000
They would take it away, displace it, and in its place we'd have the opposite

41
00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:13,000
of read-write creativity, what we could call, using modern computer terminology,

42
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:16,000
a kind of read-only culture.

43
00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:22,000
A culture where creativity is consumed, but the consumer is not a creator.

44
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:25,000
A culture, in this sense, that's top-down,

45
00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:30,000
where the vocal cords of the millions of ordinary people have been lost.

46
00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:35,000
Now if you look back at culture in the 20th century

47
00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:38,000
at least in what we call "the developed world",

48
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:42,000
it's hard not to conclude that John Philip Souza was right.

49
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:46,000
Never before in the history of human culture

50
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:48,000
had its production become as concentrated.

51
00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:51,000
Never before had it become as professionalized.

52
00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:57,000
Never before had the creativity of ordinary creators been as effectively displaced

53
00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:01,000
and displaced, as he said, because of these "Infernal machines".

54
00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:06,000
A technology - a technology of broadcasting and vinyl records

55
00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:10,000
had produced this passive, consuming culture.

56
00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:13,000
It's a technology that enabled efficient consumption

57
00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:18,000
- what we could call "reading" - but inefficient at least what we'd call

58
00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:22,000
amateur production - what I want to call "writing".

59
00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:28,000
It was a great culture for listening, not so great technology for speaking;

60
00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:34,000
a great technology for writing, not a great technology for democratic creation.

61
00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:39,000
The 20th century was this unique century in the history of human culture

62
00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,000
where culture had become "read only",

63
00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:48,000
against a background of read/write creativity since the beginning of human culture.

64
00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:53,000
OK, that's here our introduction to an argument I want to make here today.

65
00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:58,000
And the argument invokes an idea that my friend and colleague Jamie Boyle

66
00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:01,000
has been speaking of for more than a decade.

67
00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:07,000
So this Idea is that we recognize first that creativity happens within an ecology.

68
00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:13,000
An ecology, an environment that sets the conditions of exchange.

69
00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:19,000
And number 2 these ecologies are importantly different.

70
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:24,000
There are different ecologies of creativity.

71
00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:30,000
Some of these ecologies have money at the core

72
00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:34,000
Others don't have money at the core.

73
00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:40,000
And some have money and practices that don't depend upon money

74
00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:44,000
right at the core. They are different ecologies of creativity.

75
00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:48,000
So think about the professional ecologies of creativity,

76
00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:54,000
ecologies that the Beatles or Dylan or John Philip Souza created for.

77
00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:59,000
For these ecologies the control of the creativity is imposrtant

78
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:04,000
to assure the necessary compensation that the artist needs

79
00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:07,000
to create the incentives for that artist to create.

80
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:11,000
In these professional ecologies, these ecologies depend upon

81
00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:15,000
an effective and efficient system of copyright.

82
00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:20,000
But in what we could call an amateur ecology of creativity

83
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:25,000
by which I don't mean amateurish, In stead I mean an ecology

84
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:28,000
where the creator creates for the love of the creativity

85
00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:33,000
and not for the money. In that kind of ecology,

86
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:38,000
an ecology that lives within what we could call, following Yochai Benkler,

87
00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:44,000
the sharing economy. That's the economy that children live within

88
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:48,000
or friends live within, or lovers live within -

89
00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:51,000
in those kinds of economies, for these -

90
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:55,000
people don't use money to express value

91
00:06:55,000 --> 00:07:00,000
and to set the terms of their exchange.

92
00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:05,000
Indeed if you introduced money into those sharing economies,

93
00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:09,000
you would radically change the character of those economies.

94
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:14,000
So imagine friends, inviting the other for lunch the following week

95
00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,000
and the answer is "Sure, how about for 50 bucks?"

96
00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:22,000
Or imagine dropping money right in the middle of this kind of relarionship

97
00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:25,000
we radically transform it into something very different.

98
00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:31,000
The point is to recognize how creativity in many contexts,

99
00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:34,000
in the context Souza was romanticizing,

100
00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:38,000
is a creativity that exists outside of an economy of cash.

101
00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:44,000
In this sense, this amateur ecology depends not upon control

102
00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:50,000
and copyright, but instead depends upon this opportunity for free use and sharing.

103
00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:55,000
And then finally, think about the scientific ecology

104
00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:00,000
of creativity, of the scientist, or the educator, or the scholar.

105
00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,000
There's a very interesting picture here, this 16th century scholar

106
00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:06,000
notice the kind of guilty look on his face. And look down

107
00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:10,000
and see exactly what he's doing: he's copying from that book.

108
00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:14,000
He's just a pirate from long ago this scholar here, right?

109
00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:18,000
because of course, scholarship is and has always been this activity

110
00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:23,000
of creating within a mixed economy of free and paid

111
00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:28,000
A creator here has a love for his or her creativity,

112
00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:32,000
a love that exceeds how much she or he is paid.

113
00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:39,000
But it's that economy that defines the mixed ecology of scientific knowledge.

114
00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:43,000
This ecology depends not upon exclusive control, but

115
00:08:43,000 --> 00:08:49,000
but both on free and fair use of creative work that is built upon

116
00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:54,000
and then spread. Now, the key here is to recognize that these ecologies

117
00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:59,000
coexist. They complement each other.

118
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:07,000
And here is the critical point: a copyright system must support

119
00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:13,000
each of these separate ecologies. It's not enough for it to support one

120
00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:18,000
and destroy the others. It must support each of them, it must

121
00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:21,000
support the professional ecology of creativity,

122
00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:24,000
through adequate and sufficient incentives.

123
00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:29,000
But it must also support the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity

124
00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:32,000
through essential freedoms that they depend upon.

125
00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:37,000
Or again, more graphically, copyright needs to do two things, not just one.

126
00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:42,000
It needs to provide the incentives that the professionals

127
00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:48,000
need by protecting the freedoms that the amateur and scientific creations need.

128
00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:58,000
So these ecologies change. Technologies change them,

129
00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:00,000
technologies of broadcasting and vinyl changed them

130
00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:04,000
in a way that Souza feared. Government change them.

131
00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:07,000
Think about the Chinese government's relationship

132
00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:11,000
to the Tibetan cultural heritage.

133
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:20,000
Economics changes them. So in the 18th century opera was king

134
00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:25,000
and singers were troubadours. In the 20th century economics had made

135
00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:28,000
the troubadours kings and opera fell into increasing disuse.

136
00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:37,000
These ecologies change, and interestingly and obviously the Internet

137
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:42,000
has changed them dramatically, has changed professional

138
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:47,000
ecologies of creativity through technologies like Napster

139
00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:50,000
or Apple and their iTunes music store, producing radically

140
00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:56,000
new markets, and radical increase in the diversity of culture that is accessible,

141
00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:00,000
the opportunity to buy and consume culture produced

142
00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:07,000
anywhere and in any form, is the opportunity that this digital culture

143
00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:12,000
for this form of creativity has produced.

144
00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:16,000
In the scientific context,we've seen a dramatic change

145
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:20,000
in the way in which scientific knowledge gets produced and shared

146
00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:25,000
through extraordinary listservs that facilitate immediate

147
00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:29,000
spread of knowledge in certain fields to free publications

148
00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:32,000
like the Public library of science, which assures free access

149
00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:36,000
to the underlying work perpetually, to an increasing spread of

150
00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:40,000
even blog structures producing a radical new opportunity

151
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:44,000
to spread these ideas broadly. And in the amateur culture,

152
00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:50,000
we've seen an explosion through platforms such as YouTube

153
00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:55,000
of what I want to call a kind of call and response culture

154
00:11:55,000 --> 00:12:00,000
that has revived thre read/write culture fundamentally.

155
00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:03,000
So I want to give you some examples of this,

156
00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:06,000
So we just have a clear sense of what I'm talking about.

157
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:07,000
Everybody knows this -

158
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:14,000
(music) piece of work by Pachelbel, canon in D?

159
00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:24,000
A teenager, sitting in his room, [name not understood], remixed it then.

160
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:31,000
(remixed music)

161
00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:37,000
79 million people have watched this remix

162
00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:42,000
and more importantly for me, as 79 million people have watched it,

163
00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:48,000
more than 2600 people have reinterpreted it,like this

164
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:53,000
writing their own version for other people to view from YouTube.

165
00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,000
Or here's another example- This video:

166
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:11,000
(video)

167
00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:14,000
that inspired somebody to produce this video:

168
00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:31,000
which then inspired somebody to produce this video:

169
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:51,000
Here is one more example.So everybody should know the Brad Pack

170
00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:58,000
which was a collection of actors who performed first in the Breakfast Club

171
00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:03,000
And the Brad Pack was an inspiration to a certain culture,

172
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:09,000
certain generation. And the song Listomania, produced by the group Phoenix

173
00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:14,000
has become a certain cultural icon to a generation.

174
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:17,000
So somebody decided they would take the video from

175
00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:23,000
the Breakfast Club and remix it and create a music video

176
00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:26,000
for Listomania. And this is what they produced:

177
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:42,000
So recognize, this is just re-editing the underlying movements, setting it to music

178
00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:57,000
And then somebody got the idea that they ought to create (...) of exactly this. So

179
00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:00,000
Brooklyn decided he would be first,

180
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:32,000
And of course not to be outdone, San Francisco decided it would be next

181
00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:06,000
And another (...) scores of these on YouTube, from cities around the world (?)

182
00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:11,000
as people reinterpret the same original scores and create

183
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:16,000
in this amateur ecology of creativity, their own version.

184
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:20,000
which they then share and inspire others to create (...)

185
00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:23,000
This is what I refer to as remix. But what I want you to recognize

186
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:27,000
is that it is what Souza was romanticizing

187
00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:31,000
when he spoke of young people getting together and singing the songs

188
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:34,000
of the day or the old songs. But today, that getting together

189
00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:39,000
is not in the backyard, it is through this free digital platform

190
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:42,000
that encourages people from around the world to participate

191
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:46,000
in this act of cultural reinterpretation and share it

192
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:51,000
in an ecology that does not trade on money, but an ecology

193
00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:54,000
that instead trades upon this activity of sharing.

194
00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:57,000
The internet has changed these 3 ecologies of creativity.

195
00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:02,000
But the question that this organisation needs to address is,

196
00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:07,000
has copyright kept up with the change in these ecologies?

197
00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:11,000
Has it kept up with the changes as they have affected

198
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:16,000
these 3 ecologies? Now my own view of the answer to this question

199
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:18,000
is quite simple: it has not

200
00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:24,000
It has failed. It has failed to assure the adequate incentives

201
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:28,000
in the professional culture, and it has failed to protect

202
00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:33,000
the necessary freedoms in the amateur and critical or scientific culture.

203
00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:38,000
It has failed at both of its objectives and its failure is not

204
00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:45,000
an accident. Its failure is an implication of the architecture

205
00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:47,000
of copyright as we inherited it.

206
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:52,000
This architecture makes no sense in the context of the digital environment.

207
00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:57,000
The architecture, which triggers the application of copyright law

208
00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:00,000
upon the production of a copy, in a digital environment

209
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:07,000
makes no sense. It regulates too much, and it regulates too poorly.

210
00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:10,000
So think of a simple example of a book in physical space.

211
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:13,000
If these are all the uses of a book in physical space,

212
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:17,000
an important set of these uses are just technically unregulated

213
00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:20,000
by the law of copyright in physical in physical space.

214
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:22,000
So to read a book is not a fair use of the book,

215
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:26,000
it's a free use of the book, because to read a book is not to produce a copy.

216
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:29,000
To give someone a book is not a fair use of the book,

217
00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:32,000
it's a free use of the book, because to give someone a book is not to produce a copy.

218
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:35,000
To sell a book is explicitly exempted from the reach of © law

219
00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:38,000
in many jurisdictions, including the United States,

220
00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:40,000
because to sell a book is not to produce a copy.

221
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:43,000
In no jurisdiction in the world is sleeping on a book a regulated act

222
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:45,000
because to sleep on a book is not to produce a copy.

223
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:52,000
These unregulated acts are then balanced by a set of necessary regulated acts,

224
00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:56,000
necessary to create the proper incentives to produce great new works.

225
00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:00,000
And then in the American tradition, there is a thin sliver of exceptions,

226
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:03,000
acts that otherwise would have been regulated by the law

227
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:06,000
but which the law says are to remain free

228
00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:09,000
so that culture can build upon those creative works

229
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:12,000
in a way unhampered by the law. Enter the internet,

230
00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:16,000
where because a digital platform, every single use

231
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:22,000
produces a copy. And we go from this balance of unregulated and regulated

232
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:27,000
and fair uses, to a presumptively regulated use for every single use,

233
00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:30,000
merely because the platform through which we get

234
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:33,000
access to our culture has changed. This is the consquence

235
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:40,000
of an architecture, an architecture of copyright law, an architecture of digital technologies.

236
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,000
It is that architecture that produced what Jessica spoke of

237
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:46,000
when she said, "a world where we can't even go for an hour

238
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:51,000
without colliding with copyright law", and the collision is a problem

239
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:56,000
not with some generation that can't learn to respect the rules,

240
00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:01,000
it is a problem in the design of this system of regulation.

241
00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:11,000
Now 15 years into this revolution, where we're waging war

242
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:14,000
- well, in the US we waged many wars, but the particular war here is the

243
00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:20,000
copyright wars - against the implications of this new technology,

244
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:23,000
a war which my friend, the late Jack Valenti, former head of the

245
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:27,000
Motion Pictures Association of America refered to as

246
00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:33,000
as his own "terrorist war", where apparently the terrorists in this war

247
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:42,000
are our children, 15 years into this terrorist war, we need finally to recognize

248
00:20:42,000 --> 00:20:46,000
the failing, not of our kids, but of this architecture.

249
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:53,000
And we need to fix it. So, how would we fix it?

250
00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:58,000
Well, I fling myself across the Atlantic to come to WIPO to say that

251
00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:03,000
WIPO must lead in this reform. And the reform has both

252
00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:07,000
a short term and a long term component.. In the short term,

253
00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:13,000
WIPO should be actively encouraging systems of voluntary licensing

254
00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:21,000
that create a better balance between the traditional ecologies

255
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:24,000
of cultural production in the professional space

256
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:29,000
and the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity

257
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:32,000
that I've also identified. That was the objective behind the project

258
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:36,000
that I helped to found, called the Creative Commons project,

259
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:41,000
which was to design a simple way for authors and copyright owners

260
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,000
to mark their content with the freedoms that they intended it to carry.

261
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:50,000
So rather than the default of All rights reserved, this was a Some rights reserved model

262
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:53,000
reserving certain rights to the copyright owner,

263
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:58,000
and releasing certain rights to the public.. You obtain this license

264
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:01,000
by going to our site, or to a numberr of sites that have implemented it,

265
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:06,000
independently, and selecting the uses or freedoms you'd like to allow.

266
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:09,000
Would you like to allow others to make commercial use of your work?

267
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,000
Do you want to allow others to make modifications, and if they make modifications,

268
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:16,000
do you want to require that they release their modified work

269
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:19,000
under a similar license, what we call "share alike".

270
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:23,000
Those choices produce a license. And the thing to recognize is

271
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:28,000
the way that these different licenses support these different ecologies

272
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:33,000
differently. So the simplest and freest license, the attribution-only license,

273
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:37,000
supports each of these ecologies, as it produces free resources

274
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:40,000
that these ecologies can draw upon to do whatever

275
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:44,000
each within these ecologies wants. The non commercial license

276
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:49,000
however, supports the amateur ecology of creativity,

277
00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:53,000
allowing people to know that their work will be used by others

278
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:58,000
according to the rules of sharing, not to the rules of buying and selling.

279
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:04,000
And we've added, in this non commercial space, a - what we call a CC+ protocol

280
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:10,000
that allows an option to click through to license for commercial purposes

281
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:14,000
work that has been released to the world under non commercial terms.

282
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:18,000
So you can release your photograph to be used and shared by people

283
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:22,000
in a non commercial way, but have a simple transaction costfree way

284
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:27,000
to link back to a licensing organization that could license the very same work

285
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:32,000
for commercial purposes. The share alike license is designed to facilitate

286
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:35,000
collaboration in both the professional and in amateur culture.

287
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:40,000
This was the inspiration we took from the GNU-Linux operating system

288
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:44,000
which of course is licensed under a similar copyleft license

289
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:48,000
permitting commercial as well as non commercial developments

290
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:52,000
and we've extended that to culture. And then just this year, we have released

291
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:56,000
a set of protocols to facilitate marking work that's in the public domain

292
00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,000
or waiving rights that otherwise might exist, so that work can support

293
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:04,000
once again each of these different ecologies in different ways.

294
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:08,000
Last year was one of the most important years in the history of this organization.

295
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:13,000
Al Jazeera announced that a huge archive of video material

296
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:16,000
from the struggles in the Middle East would be available under a

297
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:21,000
Attribution license only, meaning you can take their raw footage

298
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:26,000
and use it in your film, or on your television station, or in your commercial applications,

299
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:29,000
so long as you simply give attribution back to Al Jazeera

300
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:33,000
The White House released its content under a Creative Commons license,

301
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:37,000
Wikipedia increased - adopted the Creative Commons licenses,

302
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:41,000
as the infrastructure for all of its licensed material.

303
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:44,000
So that last year, we saw the biggest bump in the growth of the Creative Commons

304
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:51,000
license projects since its inception, now marking at least 350 million objects on the web.

305
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:56,000
Now my view is, organizations like WIPO, and WIPO in particular

306
00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,000
need to embrace this architecture, not just Creative Commons

307
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:06,000
but any of these architectures that import and assert the value of

308
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:10,000
copyright licenses. Of course, the Creative Commons is

309
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,000
not an alternative to copyright, it builds on copyright.

310
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:18,000
It's a simple, valid and traditional license that had as its primary intent

311
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:23,000
supporting of these ecologies, of creativity.

312
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:29,000
But in supporting these ecologies of creativity, it also supports a cross-over

313
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:34,000
into the professional ecologies of creativity. And these licenses

314
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:38,000
are valid and enforceable, as we just discovered this week, in a Belgian court,

315
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:46,000
which gave this band a 4500 Euro award, a damages award, because their

316
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:49,000
because their content was used in a way inconsistent with the Creative Commons license

317
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:55,000
that it was released under, so that it protects the author to assure that their work

318
00:25:55,000 --> 00:26:01,000
is used in the way they intended, and keeps the copyright enforcement mechanism

319
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,000
open for those who violate or go beyond those terms.

320
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:08,000
Now, my view is that these voluntary systems are not enough.

321
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:12,000
In addition to the voluntary systems, we are going to need changes

322
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:16,000
in law, and this is where there's a longer term change that's required.

323
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:21,000
And in my view, once again, WIPO has to lead this longer term change.

324
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:26,000
And I want to very strongly endorse the suggestion that has been made

325
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:32,000
by the Director General, that in the context of this longer term inquiry,

326
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:36,000
WIPO needs to support something like a Blue Sky commission,

327
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:42,000
a group that has the freedom to think about what architecture for copyright makes sense

328
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:47,000
in the digital age, freed from the current implementation of copyright

329
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:52,000
which we inherited from the analog stage of culture.

330
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:58,000
Now my own view is that this conclusion of this commission will have certain recommendations

331
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:03,000
for elements to any copyright system: They'll want that the system be simple.

332
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:06,000
If copyright is going to regulate 15-year olds, it must be something that 15-year olds

333
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:16,000
can understand. Right now, they don't. Indeed no one understands the full reach or complexity of copyright law.

334
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:23,000
I've been studying it intensely for 15 years and still I make fundamental and obvious mistakes.

335
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:27,000
It needs to be re-made to make it simple. And it can be re-made

336
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,000
to be made simple, if that were an objective of the reform.

337
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:36,000
Number 2, it needs to be efficient. Copyright is a property system.

338
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:40,000
But it is also the most inefficient property system known to man.

339
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:46,000
The simplest idea of a property system, to know who owns what,

340
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:49,000
Under the current system. we can't know who owns what

341
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:54,000
because the system has been architected to give up the infrastructure necessary

342
00:27:54,000 --> 00:28:01,000
to know who owns what. And the only remedy to address this problem is to go forward

343
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:06,000
to a modern version of formalities, not at the moment of creation,

344
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:11,000
but at least to maintain the rights under copyright. And in this respect, I'm happy to

345
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:18,000
acknowledge that the RIAA and I agree about the importance of formalities in a digital architecture

346
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:23,000
for copyright in the 21st century. They have expressly endorsed the idea

347
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:27,000
of considering formalities as a way to deal with efficiency of copyright

348
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:29,000
and I think that suggestion is absolutely right.

349
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:35,000
Number 3: the law has to be targeted. It means to regulate selectively.

350
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:41,000
So if we think about the difference between taking whole copies of another person's work,

351
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:45,000
and remixing that work, and the difference between the professional and the amateur

352
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:50,000
I apologize, I'm an academic, I can't help but thinking in matrix like this,

353
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,000
we have a matrix like this. And copyright now presumes to regulate all of these

354
00:28:55,000 --> 00:29:01,000
spaces. But that presumption makes no sense. Copyright, of course, needs to regulate

355
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:08,000
effectively and efficiently, to stop professionals from pirating copies of other people's

356
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:13,000
copyrighted work. That needs to be regulated as the core area

357
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:19,000
of copyright's regulation. But just as obviously, amateurs' remixing other people's work

358
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:23,000
should be free of copyright's regulation. Not fair use, but free use.

359
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:28,000
There should be a presumption that such use is outside of the reach of copyright,

360
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:34,000
and that presumption should guide and encourage this amateur building upon

361
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:39,000
our cultural past. And then in the middle there are cases that are more mixed and more complicated,

362
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:45,000
where the law needs to carefully figure out how to assure that the incentives are protected

363
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:50,000
while the freedoms are assured. But the point about this model is to see

364
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:54,000
that the objective needs to be, to deregulate a significant space of culture

365
00:29:54,000 --> 00:30:00,000
relative to the current architecture of copyright and to focus regulation where it can do some good.

366
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:04,000
Number 4 the law must be effective, it must actually work,

367
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:11,000
in the sense of it getting artists paid, and as any artist will tell you, the current system of copyright

368
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:14,000
doesn't actually do that well.

369
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:19,000
And finally number 5: it needs to be realistic about the capacity of law

370
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:23,000
to regulate human behavior. If you think about the problem of P2P

371
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:28,000
file-sharing internationally; what people refer to as "piracy"

372
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:35,000
well, just after a decade into this war, a war which has totally failed.

373
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:39,000
The objective has been to eliminate copyright "piracy".

374
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:44,000
Now I know the response of some to a totally failed war, maybe

375
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:49,000
some from my part of the world, is to continue to wage an ever more effective war

376
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:54,000
against the enemy, to up the stakes, to punish more vigorously

377
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,000
to win the war. My suggestion is we adopt the opposite response.

378
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:04,000
that we find a way to sue for peace here, and adopt proposals

379
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,000
where the compulsory licenses are voluntary collective licenses

380
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:12,000
which achieve the objectives of copyright to compensate artists

381
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:19,000
without achieving the insufficient objectives that the current regime has done.

382
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:26,000
And we should recognize that if we had had those systems in place a decade ago,

383
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:31,000
when they were first suggested by people suggesting changes to the existing regime

384
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,000
then over the last decade, artists would have received more money

385
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:40,000
then they did under the current system, because under the current system, P2P file-sharing

386
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:45,000
rewards nobody except the lawyers suing to stop P2P file sharing.

387
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:49,000
Businesses would have seen more competition, as more would have been encouraged to engage

388
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:55,000
in a behavior that built upon this kind of creative use, because the rules would have been clearer

389
00:31:55,000 --> 00:32:01,000
but to me, the most important feature, as a father of three young children,

390
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:05,000
is that we would not have had a generation of criminals that have grown up

391
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:09,000
being told by us that they are criminals and internalizing the idea

392
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:13,000
that they are criminals and living life according to that internalized idea.

393
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:18,000
The objective of this Blue Sky commission will be to launch at least a 5-year process

394
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:23,000
to map what we could think of as Bern 2, or I would encourage you to come to Boston

395
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:27,000
and do it in Boston as Boston 1, but they could begin to think about a system

396
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:33,000
here that could work in the context of this digital culture. Now let me end with just one more

397
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:38,000
reflection. So I was once asked to come participate in an event here,

398
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:43,000
at the Association of the Bar of the city of New York. Bill Patry, who I think is going to speak

399
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:50,000
later, was at this event with me. The room for this event is this beautiful room

400
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:55,000
with these red velvet drapes and this red carpet. And the event was packed

401
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:59,000
with a wide range of people, from artists and creators and at least some lawyers

402
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:08,000
all eager to learn how the system of fair use could support their own form of digital creativity.

403
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:15,000
In American law, fair use has four components, four elements, and so the organizers of this event

404
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:20,000
decided they would ask 4 lawyers to speak for 15 minutes on each of these 4 elements.

405
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:25,000
And the theory was, after an hour, the audience would understand the law of fair use

406
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:30,000
and go out and create consistent with the law. But as I sat there and I looked out at the audience

407
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:35,000
the reaction after about an hour was more like this. And that reaction

408
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:41,000
lead me to a kind of daydreaming, which was, as I looked out at this room, I began to wonder

409
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:46,000
what it reminded me of. Because I knew there was something that room reminded me of

410
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:51,000
with its colors and its drama. And I realized that it reminded me of something I used to do

411
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:56,000
as a kid. Just after college I spent a long time traveling through this part of the world

412
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:03,000
and focused on this system of government. And I thought, as I was sitting there

413
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:07,000
looking out in the room, I began to have a daydream about when was it, in the history

414
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:13,000
of the Soviet system, that you could have convinced members of the Politburo

415
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:18,000
that the system had failed. When, in history? I mean 1976 was way too early:

416
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:23,000
It was puttering along and working pretty well in 1976. 1989 was too late: if they didn't

417
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,000
get it by 1989, they were never going to get it, right? So when was it, between

418
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:31,000
1976 and 1989 that they would have gotten it? And more importantly

419
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:36,000
what could you have said to them to convince them that this romantic idea that

420
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:41,000
they had grown up with had crashed and burnt, and to continue with the Soviet system was

421
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:49,000
to betray a certain kind of insanity? Because, as I listened to this debate among lawyers,

422
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:54,000
at least those of us in the United States, who engage in this debate

423
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:58,000
lawyers who insist that nothing has changed, the same rules apply,

424
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:02,000
it's the pirates who are the deviants - they might be right about that - but it's the pirates

425
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:09,000
who are the deviants, I begin to believe that it is we who are insane, here.

426
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:14,000
The existing system of copyright could never work

427
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:20,000
in the digital architecture of the internet. Either it will force people to stop creating, or

428
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:25,000
it will force a revolution. And both options, in my view, are not acceptable.

429
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:33,000
We, especially here, need to recognize, there is a growing copyright abolitionist movement out there.

430
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:38,000
People who believe that copyright might have been a good idea for other centuries

431
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:44,000
it makes no sense in the modern era. I am against abolitionism.

432
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:49,000
In this sense, I feel more like Gorbachov than I feel like Yeltsin

433
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:53,000
Right, I feel like an old communist who's just trying to preserve this system

434
00:35:53,000 --> 00:36:00,000
in a new era. And I wage this war against these two extremisms. Because both extremisms

435
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:05,000
are going to lead to the destruction of the core value of copyright.

436
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:12,000
Now if and only if, in my view, WIPO leads in this debate, will we have the chance

437
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:17,000
to avoid these extremisms. Now most people around the world don't care

438
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:22,000
about preserving copyright. So one last plea, if you are in that camp,

439
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:27,000
not likely if you're here, but one last plea: we all need to recognize

440
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:31,000
we're not going to kill these technologies. We can only criminalize them.

441
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:37,000
We're not going to stop our kids from being creative in a way that I at least was not creative

442
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:41,000
as I grew up in the last century, we can only drive their creativity underground.

443
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:46,000
We're not going to make the passive. We can only make the pirates.

444
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:52,000
And the question we have to ask is whether that is good for free societies.

445
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:58,000
In America, kids live in an age of prohibition. All sorts of activities in their lives are

446
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:03,000
technically against the law, and they live life against the law.

447
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:11,000
But that way of living life is corrosive and corrupting of the rule of law

448
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:18,000
in a democracy. This entity needs to lead the copyright system out

449
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:25,000
of that regime of corrupting law violations. And I urge, after 15 years

450
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:29,000
that we at least start that process now. Thank you very much.

451
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:39,000
(applause)