Lawrence Lessig Speech Streamed Live Today

in Law, Politics | February 25th, 2010

A quick heads up…

Flu­mo­tion and the Open Video Alliance will be stream­ing a live event on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 25th fea­tur­ing Lawrence Lessig, the foun­da­tion­al voice of the free cul­ture move­ment. The 45-minute speech will be deliv­ered live from Har­vard Law School via Flumotion’s Stream­ing Plat­form, and will explore the rela­tion­ship between copy­right, fair use, pol­i­tics and online video. The speech takes place at 6:00 PM local time (23:00 GMT) and [can be watched live here.]

Get more details from Flu­mo­tion here.

PS On a relat­ed note, TEDxNYED will stream talks live on March 6th.  Speak­ers will include Lawrence Lessig, Hen­ry Jenk­ins, Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wesch and oth­ers. Looks like a great event. Get more details here.

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PIRACY: A Free eBook (Today Only)

in e-books, Law | February 1st, 2010

A quick fyi on a free eBook from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. (It’s an offer that seems well timed, giv­en this week­end’s copy­right debate on OC.) Here are the details from UC:

Offered as a free e‑book for one day only, Feb­ru­ary 1: Pira­cy: The Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Wars from Guten­berg to Gates. “[Adri­an Johns] traces the ten­sions between autho­rized and unau­tho­rized pro­duc­ers and dis­trib­u­tors of books, music, and oth­er intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty in British and Amer­i­can cul­ture from the 17th cen­tu­ry to the present.… The shift­ing the­o­ret­i­cal argu­ments about copy­right and autho­r­i­al prop­er­ty are pre­sent­ed in a cogent and acces­si­ble man­ner. Johns’s research stands as an impor­tant reminder that today’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty crises are not unprece­dent­ed, and offers a sur­vey of poten­tial approach­es to a solu­tion.”

For more free eBooks, please vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

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Lessig on Political Corruption in America

in Current Affairs, Law, Politics | January 25th, 2010

Pub­lic con­fi­dence in the U.S. House and Sen­ate is at an all-time low, and, after last week’s Supreme Court deci­sion, it’s bound to sink even low­er. On Jan­u­ary 19th (the day before the deci­sion), Har­vard law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig returned to Stan­ford and high­light­ed the degree to which “insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion” — in the form of lob­by­ists and cor­po­rate influ­ence — per­vades Con­gress, dic­tates leg­is­la­tion, and brings large sums of mon­ey to cam­paigns and, yes, even rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ per­son­al bank accounts. (Rough­ly 50% of U.S. Sen­a­tors become lob­by­ists, work­ing for indus­tries they once assist­ed polit­i­cal­ly, and earn sub­stan­tial incomes.) The talk, accom­pa­nied by a rapid fire Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, runs a sol­id hour and details var­i­ous instances in which lob­by­ists have shaped unfath­omably bad leg­is­la­tion. Hap­pi­ly, the talk also ends with Lessig out­lin­ing pos­si­ble solu­tions. Pol­i­cy changes can offer some answers. But, a lot of it comes down to this: get­ting the pas­sive priv­i­leged to rein in a cor­rupt­ed elite.

Note: To see Lessig’s imme­di­ate response to the SCOTUS deci­sion, look here.

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Google Puts Supreme Court Opinions Online

in Google, Law | November 17th, 2009

A quick fyi: Start­ing today, you can find online legal opin­ions from the Supreme Court, as well as fed­er­al and state courts, thanks to Google Schol­ar. When you vis­it Google Schol­ar, click on the “Legal opin­ions and jour­nals” radio but­ton, and then begin your query. If you type “sep­a­rate but equal,” Schol­ar with present you with famous Supreme Court Cas­es such as Plessy v. Fer­gu­son and Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion. You get the gist. You can read more about this online legal data­base over at Google’s blog.

UPDATE/NOTE FROM READER: “This has already been done for the US Supreme Court, and very well, at oyez.org.  Oyez is easy to use, has lots of addi­tion­al con­tent, includ­ing sum­maries and audio of oral argu­ments, and is ad-free and Cre­ative Com­mons licensed for its orig­i­nal con­tent.  Plus, you can search by court term, Jus­tice, and the name of the legal coun­sel.” An alter­na­tive source to look at…

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Lawrence Lessig Speaks Once Again About Copyright and Creativity

in Law | November 9th, 2009

Last year, Lawrence Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford, gave what was sup­posed to be his last talk on the mod­ern copy­right regime that once ben­e­fit­ed cre­ativ­i­ty but now sti­fles it and brings big bucks to cor­po­ra­tions. But, at EDUCAUSE last week, he came back as the keynote speak­er and returned to these still-burn­ing issues once again. Lessig has post­ed his art­ful­ly pre­sent­ed talk online, and you can now watch it above.

PS Once you start the video, it will take a lit­tle while for you to see any­thing.

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Dominick Dunne Looks at the Dark Side

in Law, Literature | August 27th, 2009

Crime writer Dominick Dunne passed yes­ter­day today at 83, his death over­shad­owed by that of Ted Kennedy. Above, we fea­ture Dunne remem­ber­ing his rather unpleas­ant rela­tion­ship with Frank Sina­tra. It’s a per­verse sto­ry, though told in a some­what humor­ous way.

Ini­tial­ly, I con­sid­ered fea­tur­ing anoth­er video, but it’s entire­ly too sad, espe­cial­ly for any par­ents among us. Back in 1982, Dun­ne’s daugh­ter, an actress, was stran­gled to death by her boyfriend. And, in this clip, Dunne reflects on his rela­tion­ship with his daugh­ter. A heart­break­ing bit.

As a side note, Dunne kept a diary dur­ing the tri­al of his daugh­ter’s mur­der­er. The account was even­tu­al­ly pub­lished in Van­i­ty Fair, and you can find it here, along with many oth­er major pieces that Dunne wrote for VF. Amaz­ing­ly, the mur­der­er was con­vict­ed and served less than 4 years. Mean­while, mil­lions who have ped­dled small amounts of drugs are doing con­sid­er­ably more time across the US.

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The Obama “Hope” Poster & The New Copyright Controversy

in Current Affairs, Law | February 10th, 2009

obamaposter-198x300By now, every­one knows the famous Oba­ma “Hope” poster pro­duced by Shep­ard Fairey. Recent­ly, Fairey has acknowl­edged that the poster was orig­i­nal­ly inspired by a pho­to­graph belong­ing to the AP Press, and now the AP is claim­ing that Fairey has infringed on its copy­right and wants “pay­ment for the use of the pho­to and a por­tion of any mon­ey he makes from it.” (see arti­cle in the New York Times). In response, Fairey has filed a pre­emp­tive law­suit, claim­ing that he used the AP pho­to as a mere start­ing point and then trans­formed it into a “stun­ning, abstract­ed and ide­al­ized visu­al image that cre­at­ed pow­er­ful new mean­ing and con­veys a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent mes­sage.” If you put the two images side by side (see here), it’s pret­ty instant­ly clear that Fairey took an admit­ted­ly well done news pho­to and did some­thing quite trans­for­ma­tive with it, which makes things fair game. That’s obvi­ous to almost any­one (includ­ing hope­ful­ly judges), and it’s a shame to see the AP, which lives by its First Amend­ment rights, look­ing to use the copy­right clause to lim­it free­dom of expres­sion. Bad move guys.

As a quick side note, Fairey is being rep­re­sent­ed in court by The Fair Use Project at Stan­ford Law School’s Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety (to which I have zero con­nec­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Oba­ma Cam­paign Poster

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Download New Book From the Free Culture Movement

in Books, Law | December 9th, 2008

A quick heads up…

James Boyle, a law pro­fes­sor at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, has just put out a new book called The Pub­lic Domain: Enclos­ing the Com­mons of the Mind, and it basi­cal­ly tells cit­i­zens what they need to know about intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law to take mean­ing­ful part in our emerg­ing infor­ma­tion soci­ety. The book clear­ly com­ple­ments a lot of the work done by Lawrence Lessig. You can snap up a copy in three dif­fer­ent for­mats (Free PDF copy, Free HTML copy, Buy on Ama­zon) and also find oth­er free, down­load­able books at Cre­ative Com­mons.

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