aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Lessig on Free Use again

I’m listening to a podcast of the Princeton University - Microsoft Intellectual Property Conference panel on Creativity and I.P. Law: How Intellectual Property Law Fosters or Hinders Creative Work. In it Larry Lessig discusses, again, the demise of Free Use. 

The freedom to read - in a library; from a borrowed book or from a book you bought - is a “free use.” In the digital realm, he explains, because every use requires a copy, every time we engage in any use it must be justified as either a “licensed use” or a “fair use.”

Once there were three kinds of uses: “free use,” “licensed use,” and “fair use.” If the content industry’s view prevails, in the world they’d like to construct, one day soon there will no longer be “free use.” There will only be “licensed use” or “fair use.”

This, I agree, is a serious, significant and culturally tragic loss. I urge you to hear his message too.