This afternoon, sitting in CBKE center in Wroclaw, i’m on a video conference to Slovenia where Larry Lessig is speaking this morning. i will talk with him about the Net as an inflection point in information history, and about the way in which wealth produces law to protect itself, about how the “corporation” has enabled huge aggregations of proprietary information property in the last century, about how we are now in an environment in which the net permits the aggregation of public wealth, putting Free Culture in a downhill battle with proprietary forces, our challenge to be gentle with our enemies.
What is the idea. Meta – new architecture of the space in which our consiousness exists. Here’s a bit of audio .
The legal corporation, compare to man. The corporation does not die when the man dies. Corporate ties are contracts. Man’s is trust.
The net allows a new form of organization, not a function of the law of any state.
Compliment the brilliance of Creative Commons, its use of law to moderate the conflict between aggregated propriatary intellectual property and the power of free culture, its invitation to creators to feel themselves empowered to make discriminating responsible judgments about future use of their work, which, because they are responsible, are honored as a norm without the big stick of Law.
Law’s mission is to make an environment fit for individual, social and economic development. How does Law serve its mission in the age of Internet. Creative Commons exemplifies how Law can lead. Creative Commons is international, meta, above the laws of states even as it melds with them, a global movement with a conceptual legal structure for nourishing Free Culture – our global common wealth.
Terry Fisher for the Berkman Center is building a digital media exchange based on a compensation system for creators alternative to the transactional base of current commercial practice. This DME will be a Creative Commons exchange. It will give a choice to a creator about how to best benefit from creation. When it becomes a nuanced choice for a rent-seeking creator whether to market a work through traditional transactional means or through the alternative compensation system provided by the digital media exchange, then we will have peacefully settled the copyright war.
i want to talk with Larry about Governance of the Net. The strength of the net lies in its growth and generativity — yes, Z should be in on the video. The strength of the net will rest with those who grow it.
Where would you rest the power to control the architecture of the net?
The net of what? The net of shared values of peace, respect, love of learning, pleasure in sharing, of appreciation for diversity and culture, of Socratic truth and discourse.
Trust the net to the great universities of the world. Lead the universities to grow strong in cyberspace. Make them repositories of the value of connection, portals of access to and ability to contribute to a global common wealth of knowledge. Just as with the growth of the proprietary domain in the last chapter of our information history, the aggreagation of a great common wealth of knowledge built by and through our world’s great universities will express itself in norms and laws to support it.
Larry Lessig speaks as the first Berkman professor. Z speaks as the second. Segway to discussion of the disposition of Z’s digital track, credit to Barlow.
Billion Dollar Charlie CyberTalks with Friends.
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a program for the Net?
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Just off. It was a gas. Of course Larry was not there. i should have known, talk in the morning then off on a plane. But Renaldo and Urs were there in his stead, and both wonderfully eloquent. Thank you Maja.
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Palfrey asks a question on his blog under the title “Entrust the net to the universities?”
Nesson: “Trust the net to the great universities of the world. Lead the universities to grow strong in cyberspace. Make them repositories of the value of connection, portals of access to and ability to contribute to a global common wealth of knowledge. Just as with the growth of the proprietary domain in the last chapter of our information history, the aggreagation of a great common wealth of knowledge built by and through our world’s great universities will express itself in norms and laws to support it.”
To Billion Dollar Charlie: Where does Billion Dollar Google fit in? Billion Dollar Microsoft?
Search is such a vital element of a functioning digital repository that i expect Google to fit very well. Already Google has shown great initiative toward the mamoth task of digitizing our existing print-on-paper knowledge base. On Microsoft i am less clear, but open to suggestion. Certainly much of the content of a digital commonwealth of knowledge will be in Microsoft formats, and Microsoft would surely be in the mix of companies participating in development and construction.