i’m seated in the back of the hall next to the translator’s booth listening to larry lessig lecture as a prophet of free culture, zittrain looking preparing to probe with questions.
iLaw
We are talking about the reality we see in the world around us. Cyberspace. Social networks are now seeding and propagating in this space. Rapid growth of new forms of organization are fulfilling early visions of the Net. The influence of the blogosphere on politics and news media, of independently produced web-based art, video, and music on mainstream entertainment, of open access peer production and review on research and education, the phenomenon of FlashMobs, all are evidence of distributed human desire to connect and build toward common good.
Our objective in iLaw and the Berkman Center is to create a rhetorical cyber environment in which people come to see and feel themselves to be global citizens of the Net, even as, in real space, they honor their nation, tribe, family, self, and god.
larry just puts my picture up on the screen. i listen. he describes my plight as a law teacher trying to teach the prospective lawyers in front of me not to cheat in litigation, aware that i am speaking to a class of students who have already become accustomed to breaking laws with marijuana and fake id’s. we are snubbing the creativity of our children by making criminals of them. Big finish for free culture, my fist raised in ardent support. z leaps on the stage and asks where mischief will come from if all creativity is allowed. Now fisher, not speaking loud enough for me, asks a question contrasting consumptive and transformative fair use of copyrighted material: Abandon the consumptive if you could get the transformative?
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just had some fun asking larry does he see a connection between free culture and global warming. he sees both up against the same force, both representing that which is good for folk on the outside of imperial corporate power. “resist extremism” reads the text on screen in front of which larry stands.
what is the relation between free culture and drm, asks Ariel Vercelli of argentina.
León Felipe Sánchez asks how about drm for enforcement of creative commons licenses. larry says not on his watch.
Here’s six minutes of audio recording, thankyou’s and reactions when our sessions ended from Jorge Ringenback, Alvaro and Andy Rattinger, León, (our hosts) and Zittrain, Lessig and Fisher.