Creative Commons or the DCMA

I've just been listen to Larry Lessig talk at TED about how the law is stifling creativity. In the talk Lessig introduced the notion of read/write and read only culture. The important message from the talk is that Larry is not talking about the whole sale rip off of copyrighted material. What he is talking about different forms of creativity that take materials from the public domain and remix them in creative ways. Larry calls is a democratization of culture that for the past 100 years has been held in the hands of a few people. He sees this as a return to a time when culture was not concentrated into the hands of the few.

The only problem is that there is very little culture that is truly in the public domain. So ever remix or reuse or act of copying is now considered criminal behavior. And this leaves all of us in a sad state becasuse we all can now unintentionally break the law. In fact it is so easy to do so I doubt that there is a person that has handled or owned digital media that hasn't broken the law. 

What Larry suggests is that instead of companies trying to preserve the RO culture that technology has allowed them to create by revolting against the return to a RW culture, the should be embracing licenses such as Creative Commons. Creative Commons allows for fair use and not the whole sales pirating of materials for commercial gain. It decriminalizes activities that we encounter in our normal daily lives.

Another message in the talk that really struck home was the mention of how corrosive and corrupting the idea of how we are breaking the law is. The most amusing example of this that I've witness happened about a year ago after a Nox concert. The leads from the band came out after the concert to sign CDs and other things. The couple in front of me and my kids handed over a pirated version of the latest CD. The copy got a bit of a look over by Tomas but he just signed it and passed it over to Szilvi (lead singer). The point here is that although the band ignored the obvious copyright violation, most of those around the table got it except for the kids. Fast forward and now the kids have gotten a pirated copy of a popular Disney production (that I happened to buy a legal copy to just prior to the illegal version showing up). I didn't want to offend the "gift" givers but I though that the offering was not in bad taste, it sent the wrong message to the kids. It was in fact corrosive and corrupting.

Kids don't see the difference. They see a cool movie that they want to watch and that is about it. How can I say that it was wrong to accept this copied movie when I copy stuff all the time. We rent a movie and something happens that we don't watch it. I'll rip it to disk and most likely it gets deleted when its been viewed. I think this is a reasonable course of action. If a movie is good enough to keep or watch a few times, I'll most likely buy a copy (as I did for the kids movie). So in my mind I'm not hurting anyone, I'm not giving copies away as presents nor am I reselling them. Yet, I am breaking the DCMA law as I understand it. I've made backup copies of some DVDs. So in the process of protecting content that I paid for I am now engaging in an illegal activity. Clearly this violates the notion of fair use. It also doesn't give me much moral high ground to lecture against the gift except that it was an exercise in poor taste.

So as I sit here writing this entry I'm also ripping Nox Csendes using iTunes from a CD that I just purchased. Though all the FUD I'm confused as to if my legally purchased music can be legally copied to my Mac and then onto my iPod. When I teach the kids how to do this am I teaching them to ignore laws that they currently know nothing about? I wonder what would happen if Universal Music had released the CD under the Creative Commons license. Would that offer them enough protection to make money off of their work yet not criminalize normal behavior?

For the record all of my pictures on flickr are released under CC. All of my future talks will also be released using CC.

This isn't only great talk hosted at TED. If you want to see some truly eye popping video I'd recommend  David Gallo on Underwater astonishments. The title says it all. And try rating a talk. The rating cloud is kind of fun.