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Lessig et al. Having an Impact
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Ever so slightly, the efforts of Larry Lessig and the
Creative Commons Project are indeed helping to shape a
new public perception of intellectual property as it
relates to the Internet.
As of yet, their audience is not huge. Big media isn't
listening. Non-Internet users certainly don't care.
For the most part, even those that use the Internet
avidly do not know enough about the issue for it to be
particularly worrisome.
However, the legal profession, academia, and politicians
alike all have an acute ear to the ground. They are
just now beginning to understand the ramifications of
this new digital era. Because widespread Internet usage
is relatively new, and because copyright law is
inherently complex, it stands to reason that only a
small segment of the population would initially be
concerned with Digital Rights Management. Naturally,
debate about a cutting edge issue is more likely to
first be found in a scholarly journal, than to be heard
around the family dinner table.
But, when the public at large eventually finds out that
its collective best interest is in jeopardy, they will
immerse themselves fully into the debate. Lessig and
those like him are doing their part to help shed some
light on the subject. He states indiscriminantly:
"For the first time in our tradition, the
ordinary ways in which individuals create and share
culture fall within the reach of the regulation of the
law, which has expanded to draw within its control a
vast amount of culture and creativity that it never
reached before. ...The consequence is that we are less
and less a free culture, more and more a permission
culture."
Admittedly, there is much apathy with regards to public
policy in today's society. Copyright law may need to
become even more corporate-centric before regular folk
sit up and notice, but I should hope that the outrage
they express upon realizing that their creative freedom
has been thwarted is sufficient to make change.
In closing, I must say that as easy as it is to become
distressed when contemplating the current trend towards
Internet protectionism, I am ultimately comforted by
Lessig's truism:
"The Internet is to the industries that built
and distributed content in the twentieth century what FM
radio was to AM radio, or what the truck was to the
railroad industry of the nineteenth century: the
beginning of the end, or at least a substantial
transformation." |
