A Newsvine Interview With Lawrence Lessig, Author of REMIX: Making Art And Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy

This is the first part of a two part interview with Mr. Lessig about his new book REMIX: Making Art And Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy, which came out Oct. 20.

As usual the first part is more general about the author while the second half focuses more on the book itself. I want to thank some Newsviners for help formulating questions for this interview. You can read here where Newsviners formulated the following questions among which I only asked a portion.

Lawrence Lessig is an inspiration, someone fighting the good fight against big business, advocating for the little guy who is trying something different. He is an original thinker, helping others who march to the beat of their own drum machines.
In past books Code, The Future Of Ideas and Free Culture, Lessig has written about how current copyright law is outdated and often nonsensical. He also walks the talk, putting his books online to be read for free and plans to do the same with his new book, Which means, I suppose, one can make a remix of his book, REMIX. Sorry, couldn't resist a Remix crack.

Speaking of remixes he makes an excellent comment that I found refreshing. While doing work that will help those doing mashups and remixes he also acknowledges an important point, namely the following criticism:

There's no comparing ten minutes produced by J.J. Abrams and ten minutes from any of the stuff that passes for video production on YouTube. Remix is just "crap." This criticism is certainly true. The vast majority of remix, like the vast majority of home movies, or consumer pantographs, or singing in the show, or blogs, is just crap. Most of these products are silly or derivative, a waste of even the creator's time, let alone the consumer's.

He speaks quite eloquently about the problems and dangers caused by overzealous movie and music executives, who are essentially turning all of those who use Limewire or other programs to download music or movies into criminals, and doing the same to musicians making remixes: "There is no plausible argument that allowing kids to remix music is going to hurt anyone. Until someone can show that it will, the law should simply get out of the way. We need to decriminalize creativity before we further criminalize a generation of our kids."

But one should be careful not to paint him in a corner. He mentions at one point his frustration over people who misunderstand his position and think he believes all copyrights are wrong and that it is perfectly ok for people to download music, movies, etc. Those people make his life and fight more difficult, he said.

One thing I particularly like in the book is when explaining his position on an issue he will then rebut those arguments some may make based on his comments. For example, when he says that one reason the copyright laws need to be changed is because of how often they are violated he then responds to the counter-argument.

"Again, I don't mean this as an argument in favor of decriminalizing all currently illegal behavior. Whether or not kids rob banks, it should be illegal to rob banks. The wrong of rape is increased, not mitigated, by its frequency. Instead, I'm asking you to weigh one bad against the other: What our policy makers have done over the last decade has not actually stopped file sharing; it has not actually helped a lot of artists; it has not spurred a wide range of innovation. All it has done with certainty is raise a generation of pirates.

He also responds to expected arguments, such as to the idea that in endorsing major changes to copyright law he does not see any value in the current laws. To the contrary he writes on page 85, "The ability to channel the commercial return from music or film has allowed many people to create who otherwise could not. This is the proper function of copyright law, and its only good justification. Where we can see that creativity would be hindered by the absence of this special privilege, the privilege makes sense."

Lastly, before getting to the interview, I want to excerpt a few more paragraphs (with his permission though I would have been shocked had he said no) to let him sum up what his new book is about. He speaks of the "copyright wars" and while saying the war has an important objective - copyright is "critically important to a healthy culture" - it is also important to ensure "this war doesn't cost more than it is worth. We must be sure it is winnable, or winnable at a price we're willing to pay."

I believe we should not be waging this war. I believe so not because I think copyright is unimportant. Instead, I believe in peace because the costs of this war wildly exceed any benefit, at least when you consider changes to the current regime of copyright that could end this war while promising artists and authors the protection that any copyright system is intended to provide.

He returns to the war analogy on page 18, reminding the reader that every war has collateral damage. "Collateral damage is the focus of this book. I want to put a spotlight on the stuff no one wants to kill - the most interesting, the very best of what these new technologies make possible. If the war simply ended tomorrow, what forms of creativity could we expect? What good could we realize, and encourage, and learn from?
"I also want to spotlight the damage we're not thinking enough about - the harm to a generation from rendering criminal what comes naturally to them. What does it do to them? What do they then do to us?"

Here then is the first half of the interview

Scott: While you are endorsing new art mediums like mashups and mixtapes to the consternation of record industry types does this not leave older art forms in the dust? Or is it just a matter of redefining the medium of art?

Lawrence: I don't think it's about redefining anything. I think it is about enabling people to create as they choose. Art always changes. Tastes always evolve. The law shouldn't inhibit that evolution

With the establishment of legal bit-torrents such as Limewire, what legal recourse could owners of intellectual property chose to undermine their [Limewire's] popularity?

I think the best they could do is to try to compete -- which would help both them and the legal torrents.

Question from Howard Rheingold, a good tech writer in his own right: How can teachers help students learn what they most need to know about digital IP issues in a way that connects with students?"

By introducing the issue, and keeping it alive in all creative projects.

Why have you decided to change your focus to trying to rid politics of corruption? Have you considered projects that are more, no offense, realistic? How will you be able to gauge your success?

I can afford, personally, to fail. But this is a problem that we need to figure out how to fix. It may take many cycles of failure to figure it out.

What limiting effects do copyrights and patents have on innovation? Can you name a few things that could have been created or improved if copyrights and patents didn't hold back innovation?

I don't think copyright or patent generally stifle innovation. I think particular extremes are the problem. So software patents are, in my humble opinion, unnecessary and burdensome. And the inefficiency of the copyright system makes it effectively impossible to restore and preserve culture.

Do you consider it a form of poetic justice that McCain and Palin are now upset about DMCA takedowns? (i'm talking about this news )

McCain's actually been pretty good about this issue.

Traditionally have Republicans been more opposed to your ideas about changing copyright laws than Democrats? I was under the impression you've had more resistance from Republicans than Democrats

Instinctual, they are more resistant. But when they think about it, not. Democrats are the other way around -- instinctually, they are not resistant. But when they think about their political base (of financial support), they are more resistant.

I love your comparison of books to television and movies namely how we would blanch if the limitations on movies and music were also put on books. He asks the reader to imagine being told at a library that only certain books are available at specific times.

The idea that the library gets to say when and what I read is outrageous. Or put differently, it would have been considered outrageous for any library or bookstore or publisher to exercise the same control over access to books that television stations and film distributors exercised over film and video.
In the twenty-first century, television and movies will be book-i-fied. Or again, our expectations about how we should be able to access video content will be the same as the expectations that we have today about access to books. The idea that you would conform your schedule to a distributor's will seem increasingly ridiculous. The idea that you would have to wait until "prime time" to watch prime television will seem just fascist...."

But it raised the question: why DO movies and television and music get regulated differently (more strictly and more stringently) than the written word?

No one could regulate what you do to books, so no one did. Technology (or the lack of it) effectively regulated what you did with TV and movies (since no one had the technology to do anything with it), so it did. Now that technology has made TV like books, the battle is on -- which model will win.

To what extent is the creativity of the traditional arts and cybertools merging to redefine what is protected as a creation and what is seen as an original?

"Original" always changes. Technology is often the driver. It is this time.

What do you think Jack Valenti, often your adversary in media stories about movie copyright issues, would make of you dedicating your book to him and L. Roy Patterson?

I believe he would understand the compliment, and be happy by it

If the software that was used in the Diebold voting machines is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), how is it possible to have a transparent democracy.

If governments insisted that software used in democracy was transparent, by refusing to use proprietary software.

Considering that the American DMCA is not applicable under international law, and is often in breach of other countries constitutions and the rights of its citizens, how is it that the freest country in the world can have such a set of laws?

We are a people who have not yet recognized the freedom at stake. But that is changing.

(I thought I would end with that one which is good food for thoughts)

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