Creative Downloads: Is Lessig More?
Wired magazine is releasing a CD in its November issue that adheres to the radically different notion of copyright law espoused by the nonprofit
Creative Commons project, led by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. The CD is a compilation of songs by artists such as former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and the Beastie Boys.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that the CD "invites listeners to 'Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.' That's the kind of musical experimentation that could get you slapped with a lawsuit. But have no fear of hearing the heavy tread of Bruno Magli-wearing entertainment attorneys at your door," the newspaper said. "The artists on the disc have agreed to give music lovers the freedom to transfer the songs to their computers, distribute them over Internet file-swapping networks like Kazaa, and even sample the rhythms and hooks to create their own compositions. The only thing you can't do is use them in commercials or, in a handful of instances, a song you plan to release. It's the boldest experiment yet in trying to catalyze support for copyrights compatible with the digital reality of the 21st century. 'The Wired CD' is attracting notice, in part, because the magazine won support from some of the best-known names in contemporary music."
Lessig in an e-mail interview with the Merc, wrote: "The hardest step is the first. This CD will demonstrate and encourage. It will show many the potential that a more flexible approach to copyright offers. We are hopeful it will encourage others to do the same. And we are especially eager to see some of the creative work that comes from these remix rights."
Reuters has a recent article on how the Wired CD is one example of how BitTorrent technology, used by some to swap copyrighted files, can be used for legitimate swaps too. BitTorrent is the latest swapping technology making the recording and movie industry squirm. "BitTorrent, which is available for free on
http://bittorrent.com, can be used to distribute legitimate content and to enable copyright infringement on a massive scale. The key is to understand how the software works. Let's say you want to download a copy of this week's episode of 'Desperate Housewives.' Rather than downloading the actual digital file that contains the show, instead you would download a small file called a 'torrent' onto your computer. When you open that file on your computer, BitTorrent searches for other users that have downloaded the same 'torrent.' BitTorrent's 'file-swarming' software breaks the original digital file into fragments, then those fragments are shared between all of the users that have downloaded the 'torrent.' Then the software stitches together those fragments into a single file that a users can view on their PC."
In other copyright news, the New York Times ran an interesting article on some snags with Project Gutenberg, an effort to put complete texts of books online for free access. The project "may be the latest victim in the Internet battle over copyright. Earlier this year, the Australian affiliate of Project Gutenberg posted the 1936 novel 'Gone With the Wind' on its Web site for downloading at no charge. Last week, after an e-mail message was sent to the site by the law firm representing the estate of the book's author, Margaret Mitchell, the hyperlink to the text turned into a 'Page Not Found' dead end. At issue is the date when 'Gone With the Wind' enters the public domain. In the United States, under an extension of copyright law, 'Gone With the Wind' will not enter the public domain until 2031, 95 years after its original publication. But in Australia, as in a handful of other places, the book was free of copyright restrictions in 1999, 50 years after Mitchell's death. The case is one more example of the Internet's inherent lack of respect for national borders or, from another view, the world's lack of reckoning for the international nature of the Internet, and it is also an example of the already complicated range of copyright laws," the Times reported.
