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Instapundit, one of the most-read conservative blogs, has a link to a recent Larry Lessig presentation, and follows it up with a strange comment:
UPDATE: Lessig's pretty hard on the Democrats and Howard Berman over intellectual property, which makes me wonder -- yet again -- why the Republican Congress never took the opportunity to expand fair use rights, gut the DMCA, and generally stick it to the entertainment industries, which are a crucial source of funding for the Democratic Party and the left generally. It's not like this tactic wasn't obvious. (I wrote in 2002: "Will Republicans take advantage of this opportunity? That depends on whether they want to be a majority party - or history." Well. . . .) Plus, it was the right thing to do.
And read this, too. The first strangeness lies in his assumption that virtue lies in destroying IP rights by expanding fair use and eliminating DRM. The conclusion is devoid of analytical support in either the immediate post or in the linked material, which, aside from making some trivial points that IP is a complex area, difficult to get right, demonizes Big Hollywood in terms usually associated with leftist blogs and their assault on Big Oil, Big Pharma, Corporate Greed and other bete noirs of the world’s depressingly large population of sophomores.
A fundamental problem with the analysis (?) is the lack of recognition that any artists who want to create a career without relying on property rights or DRM are absolutely free to do so, and the existing media companies are powerless to stop them. So if openness is a better model, then how can these companies “suppress competition” by not adopting it? Instead, they would be creating an opportunity for others.
Second, the Republican Congress abandoned many principles in the last five years. One of the bright spots was its refusal to abandon its dedication to property rights as applied to intellectual creations, despite what must have been tremendous temptation to do so. Instead, principled conservatives have gone the other way, linking IP rights and other property rights, viz. the Property Rights Alliance. Good for them.
posted by James DeLong @ 11:53 AM | Academia, Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain, Big Tent, DRM & Watermarks, etc., Free Culture Movement, Physical Property
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