WEBVTT 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Lawrence Lessig: So I want to start with the words of Jessica Litman 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.000 who in 1994 wrote this in an article titled 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:12.000 "The Exclusive Right to Read". 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:16.000 Jessica wrote: "At the turn of the century, 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:19.000 U.S: copyright law was technical, inconsistent 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:22.000 and difficult to understand, 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:26.000 but it didn't apply to very many people or very many things." 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.000 "If one were an author or publisher of books. 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:33.000 maps, charts, paintings, sculpture, photographs or sheet music, 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.000 a playwright or producer of plays, or a printer, 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.000 the copyright law bore on one's business." 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:46.000 "Booksellers, piano-roll and phonograph record publishers, motion picture producers, 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:50.000 musicians, scholars, members of Congress, and ordinary citizens 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:53.000 however could go about their business without ever 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:56.000 encountering a copyright problem." 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:05.000 "90 years later, the U.S: © law is even more technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand; 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:10.000 more importantly, it touches everone and everything." 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:16.000 "Technology, heedless of law, has developed modes 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:20.000 that insert multiple acts of reproduction and transmission 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:28.000 - potentially actionable events under the © statute - into commonplace daily transactions. 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:36.000 "Most of us can no longer spend even an hour without colliding with the © law." 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:47.000 In 1906, this man, John Philip Souza, traveled to this place, the US Congress, 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:51.000 to talk about this technology, which he called the "talking machines". 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:56.000 Souza was not a fan of the talking machines. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:01.000 This is what he had to say: "These talking machines are going to ruin 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:04.000 the artistic development of music in this country. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.000 When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:12.000 you would find youg people together, singing the songs of the day or the old songs. 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:18.000 Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day. 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:22.000 We will not have a vocal chord left" Souza said 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:25.000 "The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:30.000 as was the tail of man when he came from the ape." 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 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.000 singing the songs of the day or the old songs. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:43.000 This is a picture of cultureP We could call it, using modern computer terminology, 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:46.000 a kind of read-write culture. 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:52.000 It's a culture where people participate in the creation and re-creation of their culture, 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 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:03.000 to engage in this read-write creativity because of these "infernal machines". 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:08.000 They would take it away, displace it, and in its place we'd have the opposite 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:13.000 of read-write creativity, what we could call, using modern computer terminology, 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.000 a kind of read-only culture. 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:22.000 A culture where creativity is consumed, but the consumer is not a creator. 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:25.000 A culture, in this sense, that's top-down, 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:30.000 where the vocal cords of the millions of ordinary people have been lost. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:35.000 Now if you look back at culture in the 20th century 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:38.000 at least in what we call "the developed world", 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:42.000 it's hard not to conclude that John Philip Souza was right. 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.000 Never before in the history of human culture 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.000 had its production become as concentrated. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:51.000 Never before had it become as professionalized. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:57.000 Never before had the creativity of ordinary creators been as effectively displaced 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:01.000 and displaced, as he said, because of these "Infernal machines". 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:06.000 A technology - a technology of broadcasting and vinyl records 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:10.000 had produced this passive, consuming culture. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:13.000 It's a technology that enabled efficient consumption 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:18.000 - what we could call "reading" - but inefficient at least what we'd call 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:22.000 amateur production - what I want to call "writing". 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:28.000 It was a great culture for listening, not so great technology for speaking; 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:34.000 a great technology for writing, not a great technology for democratic creation. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:39.000 The 20th century was this unique century in the history of human culture 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:42.000 where culture had become "read only", 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:48.000 against a background of read/write creativity since the beginning of human culture. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:53.000 OK, that's here our introduction to an argument I want to make here today. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:58.000 And the argument invokes an idea that my friend and colleague Jamie Boyle 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:01.000 has been speaking of for more than a decade. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:07.000 So this Idea is that we recognize first that creativity happens within an ecology. 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:13.000 An ecology, an environment that sets the conditions of exchange. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:19.000 And number 2 these ecologies are importantly different. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:24.000 There are different ecologies of creativity. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Some of these ecologies have money at the core 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.000 Others don't have money at the core. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:40.000 And some have money and practices that don't depend upon money 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 right at the core. They are different ecologies of creativity. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.000 So think about the professional ecologies of creativity, 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:54.000 ecologies that the Beatles or Dylan or John Philip Souza created for. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:59.000 For these ecologies the control of the creativity is imposrtant 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:04.000 to assure the necessary compensation that the artist needs 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:07.000 to create the incentives for that artist to create. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:11.000 In these professional ecologies, these ecologies depend upon 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:15.000 an effective and efficient system of copyright. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:20.000 But in what we could call an amateur ecology of creativity 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.000 by which I don't mean amateurish, In stead I mean an ecology 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.000 where the creator creates for the love of the creativity 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:33.000 and not for the money. In that kind of ecology, 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:38.000 an ecology that lives within what we could call, following Yochai Benkler, 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:44.000 the sharing economy. That's the economy that children live within 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:48.000 or friends live within, or lovers live within - 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:51.000 in those kinds of economies, for these - 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:55.000 people don't use money to express value 00:06:55.000 --> 00:07:00.000 and to set the terms of their exchange. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:05.000 Indeed if you introduced money into those sharing economies, 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:09.000 you would radically change the character of those economies. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:14.000 So imagine friends, inviting the other for lunch the following week 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 and the answer is "Sure, how about for 50 bucks?" 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:22.000 Or imagine dropping money right in the middle of this kind of relarionship 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:25.000 we radically transform it into something very different. 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:31.000 The point is to recognize how creativity in many contexts, 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:34.000 in the context Souza was romanticizing, 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:38.000 is a creativity that exists outside of an economy of cash. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:44.000 In this sense, this amateur ecology depends not upon control 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:50.000 and copyright, but instead depends upon this opportunity for free use and sharing. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:55.000 And then finally, think about the scientific ecology 00:07:55.000 --> 00:08:00.000 of creativity, of the scientist, or the educator, or the scholar. 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:03.000 There's a very interesting picture here, this 16th century scholar 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:06.000 notice the kind of guilty look on his face. And look down 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:10.000 and see exactly what he's doing: he's copying from that book. 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.000 He's just a pirate from long ago this scholar here, right? 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:18.000 because of course, scholarship is and has always been this activity 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:23.000 of creating within a mixed economy of free and paid 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:28.000 A creator here has a love for his or her creativity, 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:32.000 a love that exceeds how much she or he is paid. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:39.000 But it's that economy that defines the mixed ecology of scientific knowledge. 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:43.000 This ecology depends not upon exclusive control, but 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:49.000 but both on free and fair use of creative work that is built upon 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:54.000 and then spread. Now, the key here is to recognize that these ecologies 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000 coexist. They complement each other. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:07.000 And here is the critical point: a copyright system must support 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:13.000 each of these separate ecologies. It's not enough for it to support one 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:18.000 and destroy the others. It must support each of them, it must 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:21.000 support the professional ecology of creativity, 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:24.000 through adequate and sufficient incentives. 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:29.000 But it must also support the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:32.000 through essential freedoms that they depend upon. 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:37.000 Or again, more graphically, copyright needs to do two things, not just one. 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:42.000 It needs to provide the incentives that the professionals 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:48.000 need by protecting the freedoms that the amateur and scientific creations need. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:58.000 So these ecologies change. Technologies change them, 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000 technologies of broadcasting and vinyl changed them 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.000 in a way that Souza feared. Government change them. 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.000 Think about the Chinese government's relationship 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.000 to the Tibetan cultural heritage. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:20.000 Economics changes them. So in the 18th century opera was king 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:25.000 and singers were troubadours. In the 20th century economics had made 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:28.000 the troubadours kings and opera fell into increasing disuse. 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:37.000 These ecologies change, and interestingly and obviously the Internet 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:42.000 has changed them dramatically, has changed professional 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:47.000 ecologies of creativity through technologies like Napster 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:50.000 or Apple and their iTunes music store, producing radically 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:56.000 new markets, and radical increase in the diversity of culture that is accessible, 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:00.000 the opportunity to buy and consume culture produced 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:07.000 anywhere and in any form, is the opportunity that this digital culture 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:12.000 for this form of creativity has produced. 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:16.000 In the scientific context,we've seen a dramatic change 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:20.000 in the way in which scientific knowledge gets produced and shared 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:25.000 through extraordinary listservs that facilitate immediate 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:29.000 spread of knowledge in certain fields to free publications 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:32.000 like the Public library of science, which assures free access 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:36.000 to the underlying work perpetually, to an increasing spread of 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:40.000 even blog structures producing a radical new opportunity 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.000 to spread these ideas broadly. And in the amateur culture, 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:50.000 we've seen an explosion through platforms such as YouTube 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:55.000 of what I want to call a kind of call and response culture 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:00.000 that has revived thre read/write culture fundamentally. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.000 So I want to give you some examples of this, 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:06.000 So we just have a clear sense of what I'm talking about. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:07.000 Everybody knows this - 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:14.000 (music) piece of work by Pachelbel, canon in D? 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:24.000 A teenager, sitting in his room, [name not understood], remixed it then. 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:31.000 (remixed music) 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:37.000 79 million people have watched this remix 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:42.000 and more importantly for me, as 79 million people have watched it, 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:48.000 more than 2600 people have reinterpreted it,like this 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:53.000 writing their own version for other people to view from YouTube. 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:56.000 Or here's another example- This video: 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:11.000 (video) 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:14.000 that inspired somebody to produce this video: 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:31.000 which then inspired somebody to produce this video: 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:51.000 Here is one more example.So everybody should know the Brad Pack 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:58.000 which was a collection of actors who performed first in the Breakfast Club 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:03.000 And the Brad Pack was an inspiration to a certain culture, 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:09.000 certain generation. And the song Listomania, produced by the group Phoenix 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:14.000 has become a certain cultural icon to a generation. 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:17.000 So somebody decided they would take the video from 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:23.000 the Breakfast Club and remix it and create a music video 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:26.000 for Listomania. And this is what they produced: 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:42.000 So recognize, this is just re-editing the underlying movements, setting it to music 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:57.000 And then somebody got the idea that they ought to create (...) of exactly this. So 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.000 Brooklyn decided he would be first, 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:32.000 And of course not to be outdone, San Francisco decided it would be next 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:06.000 And another (...) scores of these on YouTube, from cities around the world (?) 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:11.000 as people reinterpret the same original scores and create 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:16.000 in this amateur ecology of creativity, their own version. 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:20.000 which they then share and inspire others to create (...) 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:23.000 This is what I refer to as remix. But what I want you to recognize 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:27.000 is that it is what Souza was romanticizing 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:31.000 when he spoke of young people getting together and singing the songs 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:34.000 of the day or the old songs. But today, that getting together 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:39.000 is not in the backyard, it is through this free digital platform 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:42.000 that encourages people from around the world to participate 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:46.000 in this act of cultural reinterpretation and share it 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:51.000 in an ecology that does not trade on money, but an ecology 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:54.000 that instead trades upon this activity of sharing. 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.000 The internet has changed these 3 ecologies of creativity. 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:02.000 But the question that this organisation needs to address is, 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:07.000 has copyright kept up with the change in these ecologies? 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:11.000 Has it kept up with the changes as they have affected 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:16.000 these 3 ecologies? Now my own view of the answer to this question 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:18.000 is quite simple: it has not 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:24.000 It has failed. It has failed to assure the adequate incentives 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:28.000 in the professional culture, and it has failed to protect 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:33.000 the necessary freedoms in the amateur and critical or scientific culture. 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:38.000 It has failed at both of its objectives and its failure is not 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:45.000 an accident. Its failure is an implication of the architecture 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:47.000 of copyright as we inherited it. 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:52.000 This architecture makes no sense in the context of the digital environment. 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:57.000 The architecture, which triggers the application of copyright law 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:00.000 upon the production of a copy, in a digital environment 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:07.000 makes no sense. It regulates too much, and it regulates too poorly. 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:10.000 So think of a simple example of a book in physical space. 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:13.000 If these are all the uses of a book in physical space, 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:17.000 an important set of these uses are just technically unregulated 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.000 by the law of copyright in physical in physical space. 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:22.000 So to read a book is not a fair use of the book, 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. 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:29.000 To give someone a book is not a fair use of the book, 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. 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:35.000 To sell a book is explicitly exempted from the reach of © law 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:38.000 in many jurisdictions, including the United States, 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:40.000 because to sell a book is not to produce a copy. 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:43.000 In no jurisdiction in the world is sleeping on a book a regulated act 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:45.000 because to sleep on a book is not to produce a copy. 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:52.000 These unregulated acts are then balanced by a set of necessary regulated acts, 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:56.000 necessary to create the proper incentives to produce great new works. 00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.000 And then in the American tradition, there is a thin sliver of exceptions, 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:03.000 acts that otherwise would have been regulated by the law 00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:06.000 but which the law says are to remain free 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:09.000 so that culture can build upon those creative works 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:12.000 in a way unhampered by the law. Enter the internet, 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:16.000 where because a digital platform, every single use 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:22.000 produces a copy. And we go from this balance of unregulated and regulated 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:27.000 and fair uses, to a presumptively regulated use for every single use, 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:30.000 merely because the platform through which we get 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:33.000 access to our culture has changed. This is the consquence 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:40.000 of an architecture, an architecture of copyright law, an architecture of digital technologies. 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:42.000 It is that architecture that produced what Jessica spoke of 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:46.000 when she said, "a world where we can't even go for an hour 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:51.000 without colliding with copyright law", and the collision is a problem 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:56.000 not with some generation that can't learn to respect the rules, 00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:01.000 it is a problem in the design of this system of regulation. 00:20:03.000 --> 00:20:11.000 Now 15 years into this revolution, where we're waging war 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:14.000 - well, in the US we waged many wars, but the particular war here is the 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:20.000 copyright wars - against the implications of this new technology, 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:23.000 a war which my friend, the late Jack Valenti, former head of the 00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:27.000 Motion Pictures Association of America refered to as 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:33.000 as his own "terrorist war", where apparently the terrorists in this war 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:42.000 are our children, 15 years into this terrorist war, we need finally to recognize 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:46.000 the failing, not of our kids, but of this architecture. 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:53.000 And we need to fix it. So, how would we fix it? 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:58.000 Well, I fling myself across the Atlantic to come to WIPO to say that 00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:03.000 WIPO must lead in this reform. And the reform has both 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:07.000 a short term and a long term component.. In the short term, 00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:13.000 WIPO should be actively encouraging systems of voluntary licensing 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:21.000 that create a better balance between the traditional ecologies 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:24.000 of cultural production in the professional space 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:29.000 and the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:32.000 that I've also identified. That was the objective behind the project 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:36.000 that I helped to found, called the Creative Commons project, 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:41.000 which was to design a simple way for authors and copyright owners 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:45.000 to mark their content with the freedoms that they intended it to carry. 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:50.000 So rather than the default of All rights reserved, this was a Some rights reserved model 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:53.000 reserving certain rights to the copyright owner, 00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:58.000 and releasing certain rights to the public.. You obtain this license 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:01.000 by going to our site, or to a numberr of sites that have implemented it, 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:06.000 independently, and selecting the uses or freedoms you'd like to allow. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:09.000 Would you like to allow others to make commercial use of your work? 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:12.000 Do you want to allow others to make modifications, and if they make modifications, 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:16.000 do you want to require that they release their modified work 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:19.000 under a similar license, what we call "share alike". 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:23.000 Those choices produce a license. And the thing to recognize is 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:28.000 the way that these different licenses support these different ecologies 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:33.000 differently. So the simplest and freest license, the attribution-only license, 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:37.000 supports each of these ecologies, as it produces free resources 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:40.000 that these ecologies can draw upon to do whatever 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000 each within these ecologies wants. The non commercial license 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 however, supports the amateur ecology of creativity, 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:53.000 allowing people to know that their work will be used by others 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:58.000 according to the rules of sharing, not to the rules of buying and selling. 00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:04.000 And we've added, in this non commercial space, a - what we call a CC+ protocol 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:10.000 that allows an option to click through to license for commercial purposes 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.000 work that has been released to the world under non commercial terms. 00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:18.000 So you can release your photograph to be used and shared by people 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:22.000 in a non commercial way, but have a simple transaction costfree way 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:27.000 to link back to a licensing organization that could license the very same work 00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:32.000 for commercial purposes. The share alike license is designed to facilitate 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:35.000 collaboration in both the professional and in amateur culture. 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:40.000 This was the inspiration we took from the GNU-Linux operating system 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.000 which of course is licensed under a similar copyleft license 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:48.000 permitting commercial as well as non commercial developments 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:52.000 and we've extended that to culture. And then just this year, we have released 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:56.000 a set of protocols to facilitate marking work that's in the public domain 00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:01.000 or waiving rights that otherwise might exist, so that work can support 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.000 once again each of these different ecologies in different ways. 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:08.000 Last year was one of the most important years in the history of this organization. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:13.000 Al Jazeera announced that a huge archive of video material 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:16.000 from the struggles in the Middle East would be available under a 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:21.000 Attribution license only, meaning you can take their raw footage 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:26.000 and use it in your film, or on your television station, or in your commercial applications, 00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:29.000 so long as you simply give attribution back to Al Jazeera 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:33.000 The White House released its content under a Creative Commons license, 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:37.000 Wikipedia increased - adopted the Creative Commons licenses, 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:41.000 as the infrastructure for all of its licensed material. 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:44.000 So that last year, we saw the biggest bump in the growth of the Creative Commons 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:51.000 license projects since its inception, now marking at least 350 million objects on the web. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:56.000 Now my view is, organizations like WIPO, and WIPO in particular 00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:00.000 need to embrace this architecture, not just Creative Commons 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:06.000 but any of these architectures that import and assert the value of 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:10.000 copyright licenses. Of course, the Creative Commons is 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:13.000 not an alternative to copyright, it builds on copyright. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:18.000 It's a simple, valid and traditional license that had as its primary intent 00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:23.000 supporting of these ecologies, of creativity. 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:29.000 But in supporting these ecologies of creativity, it also supports a cross-over 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:34.000 into the professional ecologies of creativity. And these licenses 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:38.000 are valid and enforceable, as we just discovered this week, in a Belgian court, 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:46.000 which gave this band a 4500 Euro award, a damages award, because their 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:49.000 because their content was used in a way inconsistent with the Creative Commons license 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:55.000 that it was released under, so that it protects the author to assure that their work 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:01.000 is used in the way they intended, and keeps the copyright enforcement mechanism 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:04.000 open for those who violate or go beyond those terms. 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:08.000 Now, my view is that these voluntary systems are not enough. 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:12.000 In addition to the voluntary systems, we are going to need changes 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:16.000 in law, and this is where there's a longer term change that's required. 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:21.000 And in my view, once again, WIPO has to lead this longer term change. 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:26.000 And I want to very strongly endorse the suggestion that has been made 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:32.000 by the Director General, that in the context of this longer term inquiry, 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:36.000 WIPO needs to support something like a Blue Sky commission, 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:42.000 a group that has the freedom to think about what architecture for copyright makes sense 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:47.000 in the digital age, freed from the current implementation of copyright 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:52.000 which we inherited from the analog stage of culture. 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:58.000 Now my own view is that this conclusion of this commission will have certain recommendations 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:03.000 for elements to any copyright system: They'll want that the system be simple. 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 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. 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. 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:27.000 It needs to be re-made to make it simple. And it can be re-made 00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:31.000 to be made simple, if that were an objective of the reform. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:36.000 Number 2, it needs to be efficient. Copyright is a property system. 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:40.000 But it is also the most inefficient property system known to man. 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:46.000 The simplest idea of a property system, to know who owns what, 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:49.000 Under the current system. we can't know who owns what 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:54.000 because the system has been architected to give up the infrastructure necessary 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 00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:06.000 to a modern version of formalities, not at the moment of creation, 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 00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:18.000 acknowledge that the RIAA and I agree about the importance of formalities in a digital architecture 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:23.000 for copyright in the 21st century. They have expressly endorsed the idea 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:27.000 of considering formalities as a way to deal with efficiency of copyright 00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:29.000 and I think that suggestion is absolutely right. 00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:35.000 Number 3: the law has to be targeted. It means to regulate selectively. 00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:41.000 So if we think about the difference between taking whole copies of another person's work, 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:45.000 and remixing that work, and the difference between the professional and the amateur 00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:50.000 I apologize, I'm an academic, I can't help but thinking in matrix like this, 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:55.000 we have a matrix like this. And copyright now presumes to regulate all of these 00:28:55.000 --> 00:29:01.000 spaces. But that presumption makes no sense. Copyright, of course, needs to regulate 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:08.000 effectively and efficiently, to stop professionals from pirating copies of other people's 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:13.000 copyrighted work. That needs to be regulated as the core area 00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:19.000 of copyright's regulation. But just as obviously, amateurs' remixing other people's work 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:23.000 should be free of copyright's regulation. Not fair use, but free use. 00:29:23.000 --> 00:29:28.000 There should be a presumption that such use is outside of the reach of copyright, 00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:34.000 and that presumption should guide and encourage this amateur building upon 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, 00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:45.000 where the law needs to carefully figure out how to assure that the incentives are protected 00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:50.000 while the freedoms are assured. But the point about this model is to see 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.000 that the objective needs to be, to deregulate a significant space of culture 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. 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.000 Number 4 the law must be effective, it must actually work, 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 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:14.000 doesn't actually do that well. 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:19.000 And finally number 5: it needs to be realistic about the capacity of law 00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:23.000 to regulate human behavior. If you think about the problem of P2P 00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:28.000 file-sharing internationally; what people refer to as "piracy" 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:35.000 well, just after a decade into this war, a war which has totally failed. 00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.000 The objective has been to eliminate copyright "piracy". 00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:44.000 Now I know the response of some to a totally failed war, maybe 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 00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:54.000 against the enemy, to up the stakes, to punish more vigorously 00:30:54.000 --> 00:30:58.000 to win the war. My suggestion is we adopt the opposite response. 00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:04.000 that we find a way to sue for peace here, and adopt proposals 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:07.000 where the compulsory licenses are voluntary collective licenses 00:31:07.000 --> 00:31:12.000 which achieve the objectives of copyright to compensate artists 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:19.000 without achieving the insufficient objectives that the current regime has done. 00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:26.000 And we should recognize that if we had had those systems in place a decade ago, 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:31.000 when they were first suggested by people suggesting changes to the existing regime 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:35.000 then over the last decade, artists would have received more money 00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:40.000 then they did under the current system, because under the current system, P2P file-sharing 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:45.000 rewards nobody except the lawyers suing to stop P2P file sharing. 00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.000 Businesses would have seen more competition, as more would have been encouraged to engage 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 00:31:55.000 --> 00:32:01.000 but to me, the most important feature, as a father of three young children, 00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:05.000 is that we would not have had a generation of criminals that have grown up 00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.000 being told by us that they are criminals and internalizing the idea 00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:13.000 that they are criminals and living life according to that internalized idea. 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 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 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 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 00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:38.000 reflection. So I was once asked to come participate in an event here, 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 00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:50.000 later, was at this event with me. The room for this event is this beautiful room 00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:55.000 with these red velvet drapes and this red carpet. And the event was packed 00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.000 with a wide range of people, from artists and creators and at least some lawyers 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. 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 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. 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:25.000 And the theory was, after an hour, the audience would understand the law of fair use 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 00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:35.000 the reaction after about an hour was more like this. And that reaction 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 00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:46.000 what it reminded me of. Because I knew there was something that room reminded me of 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 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 00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:03.000 and focused on this system of government. And I thought, as I was sitting there 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 00:34:07.000 --> 00:34:13.000 of the Soviet system, that you could have convinced members of the Politburo 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:18.000 that the system had failed. When, in history? I mean 1976 was way too early: 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 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 00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:31.000 1976 and 1989 that they would have gotten it? And more importantly 00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:36.000 what could you have said to them to convince them that this romantic idea that 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 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:49.000 to betray a certain kind of insanity? Because, as I listened to this debate among lawyers, 00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:54.000 at least those of us in the United States, who engage in this debate 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:58.000 lawyers who insist that nothing has changed, the same rules apply, 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 00:35:02.000 --> 00:35:09.000 who are the deviants, I begin to believe that it is we who are insane, here. 00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:14.000 The existing system of copyright could never work 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:20.000 in the digital architecture of the internet. Either it will force people to stop creating, or 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:25.000 it will force a revolution. And both options, in my view, are not acceptable. 00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:33.000 We, especially here, need to recognize, there is a growing copyright abolitionist movement out there. 00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:38.000 People who believe that copyright might have been a good idea for other centuries 00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:44.000 it makes no sense in the modern era. I am against abolitionism. 00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:49.000 In this sense, I feel more like Gorbachov than I feel like Yeltsin 00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:53.000 Right, I feel like an old communist who's just trying to preserve this system 00:35:53.000 --> 00:36:00.000 in a new era. And I wage this war against these two extremisms. Because both extremisms 00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:05.000 are going to lead to the destruction of the core value of copyright. 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 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:17.000 to avoid these extremisms. Now most people around the world don't care 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:22.000 about preserving copyright. So one last plea, if you are in that camp, 00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:27.000 not likely if you're here, but one last plea: we all need to recognize 00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:31.000 we're not going to kill these technologies. We can only criminalize them. 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 00:36:37.000 --> 00:36:41.000 as I grew up in the last century, we can only drive their creativity underground. 00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:46.000 We're not going to make the passive. We can only make the pirates. 00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:52.000 And the question we have to ask is whether that is good for free societies. 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 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:03.000 technically against the law, and they live life against the law. 00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:11.000 But that way of living life is corrosive and corrupting of the rule of law 00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:18.000 in a democracy. This entity needs to lead the copyright system out 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:25.000 of that regime of corrupting law violations. And I urge, after 15 years 00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.000 that we at least start that process now. Thank you very much. 00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:39.000 (applause)