HLS Professor Talks Copyright

Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig delivered an interactive lecture on the legal implications of free culture in the digital era yesterday, accompanied by a soundtrack of Soulja Boy, Beatles, and Girl Talk.

Lessig currently serves as the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard. He is also founder of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and a founding board member of Creative Commons, a non-profit group that focuses on expanding the sharing of creative content.

In his speech, Lessig discussed current United States copyright laws and the principle of fair use of intellectual material, calling for reduced legal restrictions on copyright, particularly with regards to content available on the Internet.

“The question is, how do we ensure a platform for creativity that can include the widest range of our culture?” he asked. “What does it mean to have proper copyright policies?”

Lessig also stressed the importance of the Internet in the development of a “remix culture”—in which people constantly build upon and combine existing creative content—pointing to YouTube videos as examples.

“Today, rather than gathering around the back lawn and on corners…people gather in this digital environment, on this platform and, using free internet platform, share bits of culture they make,” Lessig said. “[Remix culture’s] importance has nothing to do with the technique. What’s important here is that this technique has been democratized.”

According to Lessig, creative content should be allowed to be “mashed and remixed without a complicated set of controls built on top.”

“The issue is with the copyright law, which can only be solved by Congress,” he added.

“I think one point [Lessig] was touching on was…moving the issues to the federal level,” said James Losey, a member of the group Open Technology Initiative, which studies the social and economic impact of open technologies. “The qualm is beyond just the content providers.”

Yesterday’s Wireside Chat, which was co-organized by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Open Video Alliance organization, was broadcast live over the Internet and included questions for Lessig submitted through Twitter.