Lessig calls for copyright law remix

A short post by ZDNet's Chris Jablonski reports on Larry Lessig's call for copyright law reform at Etech, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego that I decided not to attend at the last moment. Writes Jablonski:

Remixing culture is nothing new. Throughout history people have been doing it in "ordinary ways," mainly with text. This is how cultures are made, Lessig said. But now, new technologies have changed the ordinary ways so does that mean that our freedoms change as well? It comes down to either reforming the law or reforming the technology, and since 1998 Congress decided to reform the latter to conform to 18th century law, according to Lessig. To wage the war, he advised four things we can do:

• Connect to lawmakers waging the war against new technology and speak their language

• Teach them about how powerful it is by showing them what kids do with the technology

• Change/update the idea of intellectual property

• Punish those who don't get it (and join iPac).

Here is Phil Windley's take:

Free culture is not about getting free access to people’s copyrighted works against their wishes. Its about building a world where culture can be shared. We have to state our opposition to “piracy” (in quotes) and change the debate from one about piracy to one about culture.

We need to teach kids about the ways we use bits of our culture for expression and why its important. We’re asking for changes to intellectual property, not its end. It must be updated to the needs of the technology. We demand to retain our right to remix. ...