January 03, 2007

LARRY LESSIG at the Berlin Hackers' Conference. (Via Cory Doctorow).

UPDATE: Lessig's pretty hard on the Democrats and Howard Berman over intellectual property, which makes me wonder -- yet again -- why the Republican Congress never took the opportunity to expand fair use rights, gut the DMCA, and generally stick it to the entertainment industries, which are a crucial source of funding for the Democratic Party and the left generally. It's not like this tactic wasn't obvious. (I wrote in 2002: "Will Republicans take advantage of this opportunity? That depends on whether they want to be a majority party - or history." Well. . . .) Plus, it was the right thing to do.

And read this, too. And for some further thinking on the general subject from an original-intent perspective -- rejected, alas, by the Supreme court -- see this article that Rob Merges and I wrote.