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Free Culture
by Lawrence Lessig
Penguin | March 2005 | ISBN 0143034650
Recommended by Daniel Trilling: My friends are starting to think I'm a little weird. Every time I mention the words 'intellectual property' or 'Creative Commons' in polite conversation, I'm met with a look of bemusement, as if I'd just announced a new hobby in chartered accountancy or even worse, golf.
But that's because my friends haven't read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. If you haven't either, you might have a vague idea that the book is something to do with the internet, possibly including handy tips on sharing music files. Well, you'd only be partly right. Free Culture doesnt describe how to download the latest Arctic Monkeys album without paying for it, rather it examines how our freedom to share and respond to cultural objects is under threat by how corporations have responded to new technology.
Here's an example: everyone likes to chat about their favourite TV programs, and that's fine. As long as you're speaking face to face, you and your friends can discuss favourite characters and plot twists to your heart's content. But take this a few steps further, and say you wanted to write a blog post or create a website about a TV program containing quotations, plot details or pictures. If you did this, technically you'd be in breach of the program maker's copyright, even though you're not trying to steal or profit from the original work.
Lessig explains how the traditional response to these 'breaches' (i.e. to sue the pants off people) is a barrier to further creativity and will prevent the development of new ideas in the way that last century's corporate dinosaurs hindered the development of FM radio.
Instead, Free Culture proposes the establishment of a more flexible system of copyright law, one that allows us to use new technology to share and add to people's creativity, while still ensuring that they get paid for their efforts. That system is known as Creative Commons, the principles of which are outlined in the book.
This might sound like a utopian dream, but what makes Free Culture such an important book is that it's written by someone who is decidedly not a utopian of the "property-is-theft" variety, or a computer geek. Lessig is a fairly conservative law professor from Stanford University, which underlines how important this issue is to all of us, regardless of political persuasion or technical know-how.
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About the author: Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Centre for Internet and Society. He is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge.
Source: lessig.org
