WIPO Keynote (Lawrence Lessig)
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0:03 - 0:06Lawrence Lessig: So I want to start with the words of Jessica Litman
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0:06 - 0:09who in 1994 wrote this in an article titled
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0:09 - 0:12"The Exclusive Right to Read".
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0:12 - 0:16Jessica wrote: "At the turn of the century,
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0:16 - 0:19U.S: copyright law was technical, inconsistent
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0:19 - 0:22and difficult to understand,
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0:22 - 0:26but it didn't apply to very many people or very many things."
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0:26 - 0:30"If one were an author or publisher of books.
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0:30 - 0:33maps, charts, paintings, sculpture, photographs or sheet music,
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0:33 - 0:35a playwright or producer of plays, or a printer,
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0:36 - 0:39the copyright law bore on one's business."
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0:40 - 0:46"Booksellers, piano-roll and phonograph record publishers, motion picture producers,
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0:46 - 0:50musicians, scholars, members of Congress, and ordinary citizens
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0:50 - 0:53however could go about their business without ever
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0:53 - 0:56encountering a copyright problem."
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0:56 - 1:05"90 years later, the U.S: © law is even more technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand;
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1:05 - 1:10more importantly, it touches everone and everything."
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1:11 - 1:16"Technology, heedless of law, has developed modes
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1:16 - 1:20that insert multiple acts of reproduction and transmission
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1:20 - 1:28- potentially actionable events under the © statute - into commonplace daily transactions.
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1:28 - 1:36"Most of us can no longer spend even an hour without colliding with the © law."
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1:41 - 1:47In 1906, this man, John Philip Souza, traveled to this place, the US Congress,
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1:47 - 1:51to talk about this technology, which he called the "talking machines".
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1:51 - 1:56Souza was not a fan of the talking machines.
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1:56 - 2:01This is what he had to say: "These talking machines are going to ruin
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2:01 - 2:04the artistic development of music in this country.
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2:04 - 2:08When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings
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2:08 - 2:12you would find youg people together, singing the songs of the day or the old songs.
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2:12 - 2:18Today, you hear these infernal machines going night and day.
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2:18 - 2:22We will not have a vocal chord left" Souza said
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2:22 - 2:25"The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution,
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2:25 - 2:30as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."
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2:30 - 2:35Now this is the picture I want you to focus on, this picture of young people together
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2:35 - 2:38singing the songs of the day or the old songs.
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2:38 - 2:43This is a picture of cultureP We could call it, using modern computer terminology,
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2:43 - 2:46a kind of read-write culture.
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2:46 - 2:52It's a culture where people participate in the creation and re-creation of their culture,
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2:52 - 2:58in that sense, it's read-write. And Souza's fear was that we'd lose the capacity
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2:58 - 3:03to engage in this read-write creativity because of these "infernal machines".
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3:03 - 3:08They would take it away, displace it, and in its place we'd have the opposite
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3:08 - 3:13of read-write creativity, what we could call, using modern computer terminology,
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3:13 - 3:16a kind of read-only culture.
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3:16 - 3:22A culture where creativity is consumed, but the consumer is not a creator.
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3:22 - 3:25A culture, in this sense, that's top-down,
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3:25 - 3:30where the vocal cords of the millions of ordinary people have been lost.
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3:31 - 3:35Now if you look back at culture in the 20th century
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3:36 - 3:38at least in what we call "the developed world",
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3:38 - 3:42it's hard not to conclude that John Philip Souza was right.
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3:43 - 3:46Never before in the history of human culture
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3:46 - 3:48had its production become as concentrated.
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3:48 - 3:51Never before had it become as professionalized.
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3:52 - 3:57Never before had the creativity of ordinary creators been as effectively displaced
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3:57 - 4:01and displaced, as he said, because of these "Infernal machines".
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4:01 - 4:06A technology - a technology of broadcasting and vinyl records
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4:07 - 4:10had produced this passive, consuming culture.
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4:10 - 4:13It's a technology that enabled efficient consumption
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4:13 - 4:18- what we could call "reading" - but inefficient at least what we'd call
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4:18 - 4:22amateur production - what I want to call "writing".
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4:22 - 4:28It was a great culture for listening, not so great technology for speaking;
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4:28 - 4:34a great technology for writing, not a great technology for democratic creation.
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4:34 - 4:39The 20th century was this unique century in the history of human culture
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4:39 - 4:42where culture had become "read only",
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4:42 - 4:48against a background of read/write creativity since the beginning of human culture.
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4:48 - 4:53OK, that's here our introduction to an argument I want to make here today.
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4:53 - 4:58And the argument invokes an idea that my friend and colleague Jamie Boyle
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4:58 - 5:01has been speaking of for more than a decade.
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5:01 - 5:07So this Idea is that we recognize first that creativity happens within an ecology.
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5:07 - 5:13An ecology, an environment that sets the conditions of exchange.
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5:13 - 5:19And number 2 these ecologies are importantly different.
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5:19 - 5:24There are different ecologies of creativity.
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5:24 - 5:30Some of these ecologies have money at the core
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5:30 - 5:34Others don't have money at the core.
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5:34 - 5:40And some have money and practices that don't depend upon money
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5:40 - 5:44right at the core. They are different ecologies of creativity.
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5:44 - 5:48So think about the professional ecologies of creativity,
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5:48 - 5:54ecologies that the Beatles or Dylan or John Philip Souza created for.
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5:54 - 5:59For these ecologies the control of the creativity is imposrtant
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5:59 - 6:04to assure the necessary compensation that the artist needs
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6:04 - 6:07to create the incentives for that artist to create.
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6:07 - 6:11In these professional ecologies, these ecologies depend upon
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6:11 - 6:15an effective and efficient system of copyright.
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6:15 - 6:20But in what we could call an amateur ecology of creativity
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6:20 - 6:25by which I don't mean amateurish, In stead I mean an ecology
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6:25 - 6:28where the creator creates for the love of the creativity
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6:28 - 6:33and not for the money. In that kind of ecology,
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6:33 - 6:38an ecology that lives within what we could call, following Yochai Benkler,
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6:38 - 6:44the sharing economy. That's the economy that children live within
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6:44 - 6:48or friends live within, or lovers live within -
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6:48 - 6:51in those kinds of economies, for these -
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6:51 - 6:55people don't use money to express value
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6:55 - 7:00and to set the terms of their exchange.
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7:00 - 7:05Indeed if you introduced money into those sharing economies,
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7:05 - 7:09you would radically change the character of those economies.
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7:09 - 7:14So imagine friends, inviting the other for lunch the following week
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7:14 - 7:17and the answer is "Sure, how about for 50 bucks?"
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7:17 - 7:22Or imagine dropping money right in the middle of this kind of relarionship
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7:22 - 7:25we radically transform it into something very different.
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7:26 - 7:31The point is to recognize how creativity in many contexts,
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7:31 - 7:34in the context Souza was romanticizing,
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7:34 - 7:38is a creativity that exists outside of an economy of cash.
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7:38 - 7:44In this sense, this amateur ecology depends not upon control
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7:44 - 7:50and copyright, but instead depends upon this opportunity for free use and sharing.
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7:50 - 7:55And then finally, think about the scientific ecology
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7:55 - 8:00of creativity, of the scientist, or the educator, or the scholar.
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8:00 - 8:03There's a very interesting picture here, this 16th century scholar
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8:03 - 8:06notice the kind of guilty look on his face. And look down
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8:06 - 8:10and see exactly what he's doing: he's copying from that book.
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8:10 - 8:14He's just a pirate from long ago this scholar here, right?
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8:14 - 8:18because of course, scholarship is and has always been this activity
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8:18 - 8:23of creating within a mixed economy of free and paid
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8:23 - 8:28A creator here has a love for his or her creativity,
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8:28 - 8:32a love that exceeds how much she or he is paid.
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8:32 - 8:39But it's that economy that defines the mixed ecology of scientific knowledge.
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8:39 - 8:43This ecology depends not upon exclusive control, but
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8:43 - 8:49but both on free and fair use of creative work that is built upon
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8:49 - 8:54and then spread. Now, the key here is to recognize that these ecologies
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8:54 - 8:59coexist. They complement each other.
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8:59 - 9:07And here is the critical point: a copyright system must support
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9:07 - 9:13each of these separate ecologies. It's not enough for it to support one
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9:13 - 9:18and destroy the others. It must support each of them, it must
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9:18 - 9:21support the professional ecology of creativity,
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9:21 - 9:24through adequate and sufficient incentives.
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9:25 - 9:29But it must also support the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity
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9:29 - 9:32through essential freedoms that they depend upon.
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9:32 - 9:37Or again, more graphically, copyright needs to do two things, not just one.
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9:37 - 9:42It needs to provide the incentives that the professionals
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9:42 - 9:48need by protecting the freedoms that the amateur and scientific creations need.
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9:48 - 9:58So these ecologies change. Technologies change them,
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9:58 - 10:00technologies of broadcasting and vinyl changed them
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10:01 - 10:04in a way that Souza feared. Government change them.
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10:04 - 10:07Think about the Chinese government's relationship
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10:08 - 10:11to the Tibetan cultural heritage.
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10:11 - 10:20Economics changes them. So in the 18th century opera was king
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10:20 - 10:25and singers were troubadours. In the 20th century economics had made
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10:25 - 10:28the troubadours kings and opera fell into increasing disuse.
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10:28 - 10:37These ecologies change, and interestingly and obviously the Internet
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10:37 - 10:42has changed them dramatically, has changed professional
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10:42 - 10:47ecologies of creativity through technologies like Napster
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10:47 - 10:50or Apple and their iTunes music store, producing radically
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10:50 - 10:56new markets, and radical increase in the diversity of culture that is accessible,
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10:56 - 11:00the opportunity to buy and consume culture produced
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11:00 - 11:07anywhere and in any form, is the opportunity that this digital culture
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11:07 - 11:12for this form of creativity has produced.
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11:12 - 11:16In the scientific context,we've seen a dramatic change
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11:16 - 11:20in the way in which scientific knowledge gets produced and shared
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11:20 - 11:25through extraordinary listservs that facilitate immediate
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11:25 - 11:29spread of knowledge in certain fields to free publications
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11:29 - 11:32like the Public library of science, which assures free access
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11:32 - 11:36to the underlying work perpetually, to an increasing spread of
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11:36 - 11:40even blog structures producing a radical new opportunity
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11:40 - 11:44to spread these ideas broadly. And in the amateur culture,
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11:44 - 11:50we've seen an explosion through platforms such as YouTube
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11:50 - 11:55of what I want to call a kind of call and response culture
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11:55 - 12:00that has revived thre read/write culture fundamentally.
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12:01 - 12:03So I want to give you some examples of this,
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12:03 - 12:06So we just have a clear sense of what I'm talking about.
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12:06 - 12:07Everybody knows this -
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12:10 - 12:14(music) piece of work by Pachelbel, canon in D?
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12:16 - 12:24A teenager, sitting in his room, [name not understood], remixed it then.
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12:24 - 12:31(remixed music)
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12:31 - 12:3779 million people have watched this remix
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12:38 - 12:42and more importantly for me, as 79 million people have watched it,
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12:42 - 12:48more than 2600 people have reinterpreted it,like this
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12:48 - 12:53writing their own version for other people to view from YouTube.
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12:53 - 12:56Or here's another example- This video:
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12:57 - 13:11(video)
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13:11 - 13:14that inspired somebody to produce this video:
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13:28 - 13:31which then inspired somebody to produce this video:
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13:47 - 13:51Here is one more example.So everybody should know the Brad Pack
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13:51 - 13:58which was a collection of actors who performed first in the Breakfast Club
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13:58 - 14:03And the Brad Pack was an inspiration to a certain culture,
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14:03 - 14:09certain generation. And the song Listomania, produced by the group Phoenix
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14:09 - 14:14has become a certain cultural icon to a generation.
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14:14 - 14:17So somebody decided they would take the video from
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14:17 - 14:23the Breakfast Club and remix it and create a music video
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14:23 - 14:26for Listomania. And this is what they produced:
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14:35 - 14:42So recognize, this is just re-editing the underlying movements, setting it to music
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14:42 - 14:57And then somebody got the idea that they ought to create (...) of exactly this. So
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14:57 - 15:00Brooklyn decided he would be first,
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15:28 - 15:32And of course not to be outdone, San Francisco decided it would be next
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15:58 - 16:06And another (...) scores of these on YouTube, from cities around the world (?)
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16:06 - 16:11as people reinterpret the same original scores and create
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16:11 - 16:16in this amateur ecology of creativity, their own version.
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16:16 - 16:20which they then share and inspire others to create (...)
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16:20 - 16:23This is what I refer to as remix. But what I want you to recognize
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16:23 - 16:27is that it is what Souza was romanticizing
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16:27 - 16:31when he spoke of young people getting together and singing the songs
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16:31 - 16:34of the day or the old songs. But today, that getting together
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16:34 - 16:39is not in the backyard, it is through this free digital platform
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16:39 - 16:42that encourages people from around the world to participate
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16:42 - 16:46in this act of cultural reinterpretation and share it
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16:46 - 16:51in an ecology that does not trade on money, but an ecology
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16:51 - 16:54that instead trades upon this activity of sharing.
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16:55 - 16:57The internet has changed these 3 ecologies of creativity.
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16:57 - 17:02But the question that this organisation needs to address is,
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17:02 - 17:07has copyright kept up with the change in these ecologies?
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17:07 - 17:11Has it kept up with the changes as they have affected
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17:11 - 17:16these 3 ecologies? Now my own view of the answer to this question
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17:16 - 17:18is quite simple: it has not
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17:18 - 17:24It has failed. It has failed to assure the adequate incentives
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17:24 - 17:28in the professional culture, and it has failed to protect
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17:28 - 17:33the necessary freedoms in the amateur and critical or scientific culture.
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17:33 - 17:38It has failed at both of its objectives and its failure is not
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17:38 - 17:45an accident. Its failure is an implication of the architecture
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17:45 - 17:47of copyright as we inherited it.
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17:47 - 17:52This architecture makes no sense in the context of the digital environment.
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17:52 - 17:57The architecture, which triggers the application of copyright law
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17:57 - 18:00upon the production of a copy, in a digital environment
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18:00 - 18:07makes no sense. It regulates too much, and it regulates too poorly.
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18:07 - 18:10So think of a simple example of a book in physical space.
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18:10 - 18:13If these are all the uses of a book in physical space,
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18:13 - 18:17an important set of these uses are just technically unregulated
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18:17 - 18:20by the law of copyright in physical in physical space.
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18:20 - 18:22So to read a book is not a fair use of the book,
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18:22 - 18:26it's a free use of the book, because to read a book is not to produce a copy.
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18:26 - 18:29To give someone a book is not a fair use of the book,
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18:29 - 18:32it's a free use of the book, because to give someone a book is not to produce a copy.
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18:32 - 18:35To sell a book is explicitly exempted from the reach of © law
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18:35 - 18:38in many jurisdictions, including the United States,
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18:38 - 18:40because to sell a book is not to produce a copy.
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18:40 - 18:43In no jurisdiction in the world is sleeping on a book a regulated act
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18:43 - 18:45because to sleep on a book is not to produce a copy.
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18:45 - 18:52These unregulated acts are then balanced by a set of necessary regulated acts,
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18:52 - 18:56necessary to create the proper incentives to produce great new works.
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18:56 - 19:00And then in the American tradition, there is a thin sliver of exceptions,
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19:00 - 19:03acts that otherwise would have been regulated by the law
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19:03 - 19:06but which the law says are to remain free
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19:06 - 19:09so that culture can build upon those creative works
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19:09 - 19:12in a way unhampered by the law. Enter the internet,
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19:12 - 19:16where because a digital platform, every single use
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19:17 - 19:22produces a copy. And we go from this balance of unregulated and regulated
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19:22 - 19:27and fair uses, to a presumptively regulated use for every single use,
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19:27 - 19:30merely because the platform through which we get
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19:30 - 19:33access to our culture has changed. This is the consquence
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19:33 - 19:40of an architecture, an architecture of copyright law, an architecture of digital technologies.
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19:40 - 19:42It is that architecture that produced what Jessica spoke of
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19:42 - 19:46when she said, "a world where we can't even go for an hour
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19:46 - 19:51without colliding with copyright law", and the collision is a problem
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19:51 - 19:56not with some generation that can't learn to respect the rules,
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19:56 - 20:01it is a problem in the design of this system of regulation.
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20:03 - 20:11Now 15 years into this revolution, where we're waging war
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20:11 - 20:14- well, in the US we waged many wars, but the particular war here is the
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20:14 - 20:20copyright wars - against the implications of this new technology,
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20:20 - 20:23a war which my friend, the late Jack Valenti, former head of the
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20:23 - 20:27Motion Pictures Association of America refered to as
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20:27 - 20:33as his own "terrorist war", where apparently the terrorists in this war
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20:33 - 20:42are our children, 15 years into this terrorist war, we need finally to recognize
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20:42 - 20:46the failing, not of our kids, but of this architecture.
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20:46 - 20:53And we need to fix it. So, how would we fix it?
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20:53 - 20:58Well, I fling myself across the Atlantic to come to WIPO to say that
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20:58 - 21:03WIPO must lead in this reform. And the reform has both
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21:03 - 21:07a short term and a long term component.. In the short term,
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21:07 - 21:13WIPO should be actively encouraging systems of voluntary licensing
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21:13 - 21:21that create a better balance between the traditional ecologies
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21:21 - 21:24of cultural production in the professional space
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21:24 - 21:29and the amateur and scientific ecologies of creativity
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21:29 - 21:32that I've also identified. That was the objective behind the project
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21:32 - 21:36that I helped to found, called the Creative Commons project,
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21:36 - 21:41which was to design a simple way for authors and copyright owners
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21:41 - 21:45to mark their content with the freedoms that they intended it to carry.
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21:45 - 21:50So rather than the default of All rights reserved, this was a Some rights reserved model
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21:50 - 21:53reserving certain rights to the copyright owner,
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21:53 - 21:58and releasing certain rights to the public.. You obtain this license
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21:58 - 22:01by going to our site, or to a numberr of sites that have implemented it,
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22:01 - 22:06independently, and selecting the uses or freedoms you'd like to allow.
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22:06 - 22:09Would you like to allow others to make commercial use of your work?
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22:09 - 22:12Do you want to allow others to make modifications, and if they make modifications,
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22:12 - 22:16do you want to require that they release their modified work
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22:16 - 22:19under a similar license, what we call "share alike".
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22:19 - 22:23Those choices produce a license. And the thing to recognize is
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22:23 - 22:28the way that these different licenses support these different ecologies
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22:28 - 22:33differently. So the simplest and freest license, the attribution-only license,
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22:33 - 22:37supports each of these ecologies, as it produces free resources
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22:37 - 22:40that these ecologies can draw upon to do whatever
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22:40 - 22:44each within these ecologies wants. The non commercial license
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22:44 - 22:49however, supports the amateur ecology of creativity,
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22:49 - 22:53allowing people to know that their work will be used by others
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22:53 - 22:58according to the rules of sharing, not to the rules of buying and selling.
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22:58 - 23:04And we've added, in this non commercial space, a - what we call a CC+ protocol
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23:04 - 23:10that allows an option to click through to license for commercial purposes
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23:10 - 23:14work that has been released to the world under non commercial terms.
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23:14 - 23:18So you can release your photograph to be used and shared by people
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23:18 - 23:22in a non commercial way, but have a simple transaction costfree way
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23:22 - 23:27to link back to a licensing organization that could license the very same work
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23:27 - 23:32for commercial purposes. The share alike license is designed to facilitate
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23:32 - 23:35collaboration in both the professional and in amateur culture.
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23:35 - 23:40This was the inspiration we took from the GNU-Linux operating system
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23:40 - 23:44which of course is licensed under a similar copyleft license
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23:44 - 23:48permitting commercial as well as non commercial developments
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23:48 - 23:52and we've extended that to culture. And then just this year, we have released
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23:52 - 23:56a set of protocols to facilitate marking work that's in the public domain
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23:56 - 24:01or waiving rights that otherwise might exist, so that work can support
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24:01 - 24:04once again each of these different ecologies in different ways.
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24:04 - 24:08Last year was one of the most important years in the history of this organization.
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24:08 - 24:13Al Jazeera announced that a huge archive of video material
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24:13 - 24:16from the struggles in the Middle East would be available under a
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24:16 - 24:21Attribution license only, meaning you can take their raw footage
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24:21 - 24:26and use it in your film, or on your television station, or in your commercial applications,
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24:26 - 24:29so long as you simply give attribution back to Al Jazeera
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24:29 - 24:33The White House released its content under a Creative Commons license,
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24:33 - 24:37Wikipedia increased - adopted the Creative Commons licenses,
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24:37 - 24:41as the infrastructure for all of its licensed material.
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24:41 - 24:44So that last year, we saw the biggest bump in the growth of the Creative Commons
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24:44 - 24:51license projects since its inception, now marking at least 350 million objects on the web.
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24:51 - 24:56Now my view is, organizations like WIPO, and WIPO in particular
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24:56 - 25:00need to embrace this architecture, not just Creative Commons
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25:00 - 25:06but any of these architectures that import and assert the value of
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25:06 - 25:10copyright licenses. Of course, the Creative Commons is
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25:10 - 25:13not an alternative to copyright, it builds on copyright.
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25:13 - 25:18It's a simple, valid and traditional license that had as its primary intent
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25:18 - 25:23supporting of these ecologies, of creativity.
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25:23 - 25:29But in supporting these ecologies of creativity, it also supports a cross-over
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25:29 - 25:34into the professional ecologies of creativity. And these licenses
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25:34 - 25:38are valid and enforceable, as we just discovered this week, in a Belgian court,
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25:38 - 25:46which gave this band a 4500 Euro award, a damages award, because their
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25:46 - 25:49because their content was used in a way inconsistent with the Creative Commons license
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25:49 - 25:55that it was released under, so that it protects the author to assure that their work
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25:55 - 26:01is used in the way they intended, and keeps the copyright enforcement mechanism
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26:01 - 26:04open for those who violate or go beyond those terms.
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26:04 - 26:08Now, my view is that these voluntary systems are not enough.
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26:08 - 26:12In addition to the voluntary systems, we are going to need changes
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26:12 - 26:16in law, and this is where there's a longer term change that's required.
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26:16 - 26:21And in my view, once again, WIPO has to lead this longer term change.
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26:21 - 26:26And I want to very strongly endorse the suggestion that has been made
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26:26 - 26:32by the Director General, that in the context of this longer term inquiry,
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26:32 - 26:36WIPO needs to support something like a Blue Sky commission,
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26:36 - 26:42a group that has the freedom to think about what architecture for copyright makes sense
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26:42 - 26:47in the digital age, freed from the current implementation of copyright
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26:47 - 26:52which we inherited from the analog stage of culture.
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26:52 - 26:58Now my own view is that this conclusion of this commission will have certain recommendations
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26:58 - 27:03for elements to any copyright system: They'll want that the system be simple.
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27:03 - 27:06If copyright is going to regulate 15-year olds, it must be something that 15-year olds
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27:06 - 27:16can understand. Right now, they don't. Indeed no one understands the full reach or complexity of copyright law.
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27:16 - 27:23I've been studying it intensely for 15 years and still I make fundamental and obvious mistakes.
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27:23 - 27:27It needs to be re-made to make it simple. And it can be re-made
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27:27 - 27:31to be made simple, if that were an objective of the reform.
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27:31 - 27:36Number 2, it needs to be efficient. Copyright is a property system.
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27:36 - 27:40But it is also the most inefficient property system known to man.
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27:40 - 27:46The simplest idea of a property system, to know who owns what,
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27:46 - 27:49Under the current system. we can't know who owns what
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27:49 - 27:54because the system has been architected to give up the infrastructure necessary
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27:54 - 28:01to know who owns what. And the only remedy to address this problem is to go forward
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28:01 - 28:06to a modern version of formalities, not at the moment of creation,
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28:06 - 28:11but at least to maintain the rights under copyright. And in this respect, I'm happy to
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28:11 - 28:18acknowledge that the RIAA and I agree about the importance of formalities in a digital architecture
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28:18 - 28:23for copyright in the 21st century. They have expressly endorsed the idea
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28:23 - 28:27of considering formalities as a way to deal with efficiency of copyright
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28:27 - 28:29and I think that suggestion is absolutely right.
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28:29 - 28:35Number 3: the law has to be targeted. It means to regulate selectively.
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28:35 - 28:41So if we think about the difference between taking whole copies of another person's work,
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28:41 - 28:45and remixing that work, and the difference between the professional and the amateur
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28:45 - 28:50I apologize, I'm an academic, I can't help but thinking in matrix like this,
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28:51 - 28:55we have a matrix like this. And copyright now presumes to regulate all of these
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28:55 - 29:01spaces. But that presumption makes no sense. Copyright, of course, needs to regulate
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29:01 - 29:08effectively and efficiently, to stop professionals from pirating copies of other people's
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29:08 - 29:13copyrighted work. That needs to be regulated as the core area
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29:13 - 29:19of copyright's regulation. But just as obviously, amateurs' remixing other people's work
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29:19 - 29:23should be free of copyright's regulation. Not fair use, but free use.
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29:23 - 29:28There should be a presumption that such use is outside of the reach of copyright,
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29:28 - 29:34and that presumption should guide and encourage this amateur building upon
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29:34 - 29:39our cultural past. And then in the middle there are cases that are more mixed and more complicated,
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29:39 - 29:45where the law needs to carefully figure out how to assure that the incentives are protected
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29:45 - 29:50while the freedoms are assured. But the point about this model is to see
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29:50 - 29:54that the objective needs to be, to deregulate a significant space of culture
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29:54 - 30:00relative to the current architecture of copyright and to focus regulation where it can do some good.
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30:00 - 30:04Number 4 the law must be effective, it must actually work,
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30:04 - 30:11in the sense of it getting artists paid, and as any artist will tell you, the current system of copyright
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30:11 - 30:14doesn't actually do that well.
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30:14 - 30:19And finally number 5: it needs to be realistic about the capacity of law
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30:19 - 30:23to regulate human behavior. If you think about the problem of P2P
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30:23 - 30:28file-sharing internationally; what people refer to as "piracy"
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30:28 - 30:35well, just after a decade into this war, a war which has totally failed.
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30:35 - 30:39The objective has been to eliminate copyright "piracy".
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30:39 - 30:44Now I know the response of some to a totally failed war, maybe
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30:44 - 30:49some from my part of the world, is to continue to wage an ever more effective war
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30:49 - 30:54against the enemy, to up the stakes, to punish more vigorously
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30:54 - 30:58to win the war. My suggestion is we adopt the opposite response.
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30:58 - 31:04that we find a way to sue for peace here, and adopt proposals
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31:04 - 31:07where the compulsory licenses are voluntary collective licenses
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31:07 - 31:12which achieve the objectives of copyright to compensate artists
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31:13 - 31:19without achieving the insufficient objectives that the current regime has done.
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31:19 - 31:26And we should recognize that if we had had those systems in place a decade ago,
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31:26 - 31:31when they were first suggested by people suggesting changes to the existing regime
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31:31 - 31:35then over the last decade, artists would have received more money
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31:35 - 31:40then they did under the current system, because under the current system, P2P file-sharing
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31:40 - 31:45rewards nobody except the lawyers suing to stop P2P file sharing.
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31:45 - 31:49Businesses would have seen more competition, as more would have been encouraged to engage
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31:49 - 31:55in a behavior that built upon this kind of creative use, because the rules would have been clearer
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31:55 - 32:01but to me, the most important feature, as a father of three young children,
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32:01 - 32:05is that we would not have had a generation of criminals that have grown up
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32:05 - 32:09being told by us that they are criminals and internalizing the idea
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32:09 - 32:13that they are criminals and living life according to that internalized idea.
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32:13 - 32:18The objective of this Blue Sky commission will be to launch at least a 5-year process
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32:18 - 32:23to map what we could think of as Bern 2, or I would encourage you to come to Boston
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32:23 - 32:27and do it in Boston as Boston 1, but they could begin to think about a system
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32:27 - 32:33here that could work in the context of this digital culture. Now let me end with just one more
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32:33 - 32:38reflection. So I was once asked to come participate in an event here,
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32:38 - 32:43at the Association of the Bar of the city of New York. Bill Patry, who I think is going to speak
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32:43 - 32:50later, was at this event with me. The room for this event is this beautiful room
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32:50 - 32:55with these red velvet drapes and this red carpet. And the event was packed
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32:55 - 32:59with a wide range of people, from artists and creators and at least some lawyers
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32:59 - 33:08all eager to learn how the system of fair use could support their own form of digital creativity.
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33:08 - 33:15In American law, fair use has four components, four elements, and so the organizers of this event
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33:15 - 33:20decided they would ask 4 lawyers to speak for 15 minutes on each of these 4 elements.
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33:20 - 33:25And the theory was, after an hour, the audience would understand the law of fair use
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33:25 - 33:30and go out and create consistent with the law. But as I sat there and I looked out at the audience
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33:30 - 33:35the reaction after about an hour was more like this. And that reaction
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33:35 - 33:41lead me to a kind of daydreaming, which was, as I looked out at this room, I began to wonder
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33:41 - 33:46what it reminded me of. Because I knew there was something that room reminded me of
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33:46 - 33:51with its colors and its drama. And I realized that it reminded me of something I used to do
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33:51 - 33:56as a kid. Just after college I spent a long time traveling through this part of the world
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33:56 - 34:03and focused on this system of government. And I thought, as I was sitting there
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34:03 - 34:07looking out in the room, I began to have a daydream about when was it, in the history
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34:07 - 34:13of the Soviet system, that you could have convinced members of the Politburo
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34:13 - 34:18that the system had failed. When, in history? I mean 1976 was way too early:
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34:18 - 34:23It was puttering along and working pretty well in 1976. 1989 was too late: if they didn't
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34:23 - 34:27get it by 1989, they were never going to get it, right? So when was it, between
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34:27 - 34:311976 and 1989 that they would have gotten it? And more importantly
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34:31 - 34:36what could you have said to them to convince them that this romantic idea that
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34:36 - 34:41they had grown up with had crashed and burnt, and to continue with the Soviet system was
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34:41 - 34:49to betray a certain kind of insanity? Because, as I listened to this debate among lawyers,
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34:49 - 34:54at least those of us in the United States, who engage in this debate
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34:54 - 34:58lawyers who insist that nothing has changed, the same rules apply,
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34:58 - 35:02it's the pirates who are the deviants - they might be right about that - but it's the pirates
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35:02 - 35:09who are the deviants, I begin to believe that it is we who are insane, here.
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35:09 - 35:14The existing system of copyright could never work
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35:14 - 35:20in the digital architecture of the internet. Either it will force people to stop creating, or
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35:20 - 35:25it will force a revolution. And both options, in my view, are not acceptable.
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35:25 - 35:33We, especially here, need to recognize, there is a growing copyright abolitionist movement out there.
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35:33 - 35:38People who believe that copyright might have been a good idea for other centuries
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35:38 - 35:44it makes no sense in the modern era. I am against abolitionism.
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35:44 - 35:49In this sense, I feel more like Gorbachov than I feel like Yeltsin
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35:49 - 35:53Right, I feel like an old communist who's just trying to preserve this system
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35:53 - 36:00in a new era. And I wage this war against these two extremisms. Because both extremisms
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36:00 - 36:05are going to lead to the destruction of the core value of copyright.
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36:05 - 36:12Now if and only if, in my view, WIPO leads in this debate, will we have the chance
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36:12 - 36:17to avoid these extremisms. Now most people around the world don't care
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36:17 - 36:22about preserving copyright. So one last plea, if you are in that camp,
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36:22 - 36:27not likely if you're here, but one last plea: we all need to recognize
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36:27 - 36:31we're not going to kill these technologies. We can only criminalize them.
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36:31 - 36:37We're not going to stop our kids from being creative in a way that I at least was not creative
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36:37 - 36:41as I grew up in the last century, we can only drive their creativity underground.
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36:41 - 36:46We're not going to make the passive. We can only make the pirates.
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36:46 - 36:52And the question we have to ask is whether that is good for free societies.
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36:52 - 36:58In America, kids live in an age of prohibition. All sorts of activities in their lives are
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36:58 - 37:03technically against the law, and they live life against the law.
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37:03 - 37:11But that way of living life is corrosive and corrupting of the rule of law
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37:11 - 37:18in a democracy. This entity needs to lead the copyright system out
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37:18 - 37:25of that regime of corrupting law violations. And I urge, after 15 years
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37:25 - 37:29that we at least start that process now. Thank you very much.
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37:29 - 37:39(applause)
- Title:
- WIPO Keynote (Lawrence Lessig)
- Description:
-
Original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AT02dOSbxc video uploaded on Nov 12, 2010 by http://www.youtube.com/user/lessig?feature=watch as "WIPO Keynote".
Original YouTube description
4 November 2010, Geneva: Keynote at WIPO "Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age" Meeting. A bunch here is familiar, though I refine a bit the idea of ecologies of culture, and press for WIPO to launch a "blue skies" commission to frame a sensible framework for copyright in the digital age. Comments welcome at comments@lessig.org
- Video Language:
- English
- Duration:
- 37:40
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for WIPO Keynote (Lawrence Lessig) | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for WIPO Keynote (Lawrence Lessig) | ||
Claude Almansi commented on English subtitles for WIPO Keynote (Lawrence Lessig) | ||
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for WIPO Keynote (Lawrence Lessig) |