rigorousintuition.ca

http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/

"'Intellectual property is the oil of the twenty first century" -Mark Getty, chairman Getty Images

Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

"Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of three stories and an argument. The Net's most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the "ASCAP cartel" to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you've ever seen."

Good stuff. Between this and the Amory thread, I'm almost in a state of technoptimism...

Wow! "tecnoptimism" rolls off the tongue so much more smoothly that "futurist utopianism."

I'm taking that word.

Hmmm - pre-digital law... it reminds me of the mess that corporate law has made of the world.

Corporate law should be reformed to orient corporate structures as entities in the service of the public good. Copyright law should be formulated in a way that acknowledges the reality of digital freedom, rather than trying to restrict digital freedom.

There seems to be a real life drama brewing related to the topic of this thread. The Anonymous Vs. Scientology war began, as far as I understand it with the posting of the Tom Cruise video and the Scientology's attempts to have it removed from the internets due to copyright violation. This has pissed off a fairly large number of people and lends itself directly to what Lessig describes in the TED lecture, a tension between those holding intellectual copyrights and well, the rest of us. I understand it's more than that but it seems as though we are witnessing the beginning of true interweb radicalism.

Here is the latest from "Anonymous", warning us (or encouraging us) to beware of February 10th. A "Call to Action" if you will...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrkchXCzY70

Interesting times indeed.