Free Culture is his new book. Someone at Forbes didn't like it and called him a moron. That was a remix! He took Larry's words and added his own to say something different. That's a freedom in our culture that we've had for a long time. It's free culture.
Writers know this when dealing with text. But what if you go beyond text into other media? Music: white album, black album, grey album. Film: $218 film at Cannes. Politics: political media remix videos. (He's showing us some hilarious videos now.)
The potential of digital remix. All you need is a $1,500 computer (or less). It's democratic. It's part of a bottom-up democracy. NYT to blogs, peer to peer.
Problem. Laws make this illegal. Permission required to use copyrighted works like this. But getting permission is far too hard to get. The laws have massively changed. Copyright went from opt-in to opt-out in 1978. That takes us from free culture to a permission culture.
Fox News vs. the movies Outfoxed.
Text-heads think this is an easy problem.
The Induce Act is not dead. It's a really, really big threat.
We need to make digital culture free.
BTW, Lessig has a great presentation style--compelling and engaging.
See Also: My Web 2.0 post archive for coverage of all the other sessions I attended.
Posted by jzawodn at October 07, 2004 04:52 PM
