In 2001, Stan­ford law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig pub­lished The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Com­mons in a Con­nect­ed World. Here, Lessig launched a cam­paign against Amer­i­can copy­right law, argu­ing that it has become so restric­tive that it sti­fles cul­tur­al inno­va­tion and social progress .… which under­mines the orig­i­nal point of copy­right law. Back in 1787, the found­ing fathers includ­ed the “copy­right clause” in the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, look­ing to give authors a short-term incen­tive to inno­vate and ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the pub­lic good. (Arti­cle I, Sec­tion 8 empow­ers Con­gress “To pro­mote the Progress of Sci­ence and use­ful Arts, by secur­ing for lim­it­ed Times to Authors and Inven­tors the exclu­sive Right to their respec­tive Writ­ings and Dis­cov­er­ies.”). At the out­set, copy­right law pro­tect­ed forms of expres­sion — and let authors prof­it from them — for a min­i­mum of 14 years and a max­i­mum of 28. Then, the mate­r­i­al went into the pub­lic domain. But over time, the pro­tec­tions placed on cul­tur­al expres­sion have been extend­ed, and now works are pro­tect­ed so long as an author is alive, and then anoth­er 70 years. That’s poten­tial­ly up to 140 years or more. All of this has hap­pened because Con­gress has been suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied by large media cor­po­ra­tions (e.g. Dis­ney), want­i­ng to mon­e­tize their media assets (think, Mick­ey Mouse) indef­i­nite­ly.

Any­way, this is a long way of telling you that you can now down­load The Future of Ideas for free. Lessig per­suad­ed Ran­dom House to release the book under a “Cre­ative Com­mons” license, using the argu­ment that free e‑books will actu­al­ly stim­u­late sales of paper copies. (Do you real­ly want to read 350 pages on your com­put­er screen?)

This is not the first time that Lessig has worked with this mod­el. One of his pre­vi­ous books, Free Cul­ture: How Big Media Uses Tech­nol­o­gy and the Law to Lock Down Cul­ture and Con­trol Cre­ativ­i­ty, was also made freely avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. (You can down­load a free audio­book ver­sion or buy the paper ver­sion here.)

As a final note, I should men­tion that Lessig will be leav­ing behind his focus on these copy­right issues, and turn­ing his sights to cor­rup­tion in Wash­ing­ton. Below you can watch him out­line the prob­lem that he’s look­ing to tack­le.

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The Supreme Court has long tak­en heat for being in the tech­no­log­i­cal arrière-garde, a crit­i­cism that has seemed fair giv­en its unwill­ing­ness to even allow cam­eras into its oral argu­ments.

Slow­ly, how­ev­er, that per­cep­tion may be about to change. Accord­ing to the ABA Jour­nal eRe­port, the Court has stuck a small toe into the tech­nol­o­gy waters by pro­vid­ing web access to video­taped evi­dence that fig­ured into a recent case, Scott v. Har­ris. The url for the video gets ref­er­enced with­in the writ­ten opin­ion for the case, and a link is pro­vid­ed from the Court’s opin­ions web page. (You’ll need Real Play­er to watch it.)

The video itself is noth­ing spe­cial. It fea­tures very low qual­i­ty footage of a car chase tak­en from the dash­board of a police car, and it’s essen­tial­ly the same sce­nario that Amer­i­ca has seen played out for almost 20 years on Fox’s COPS. As you watch the video, you can’t help but feel that this land­mark moment for the court is a non-moment. But that’s per­haps to be expect­ed when a tra­di­tion-bound insti­tu­tion banal­ly enters a brave new world.

• Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty — Wash­ing­ton Col­lege of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • An eclec­tic col­lec­tion of legal pod­casts.

• Duke Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Lec­tures, pan­els, con­fer­ences, etc.

• George­town Uni­ver­si­ty — George­town Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions.

• George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The Law and Eco­nom­ics Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pro­duced by the Jour­nal of Law, Eco­nom­ics, and Pol­i­cy.
• Har­vard Law School
  • Medi­a­Berk­man by The Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net & Soci­ety iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Medi­a­Berk­man “fea­tures con­ver­sa­tions with and talks by lead­ing cyber-schol­ars, entre­pre­neurs, activists, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers as they explore top­ics such as the fac­tors that influ­ence knowl­edge cre­ation and dis­sem­i­na­tion in the dig­i­tal age; the char­ac­ter of pow­er as the worlds of gov­er­nance, busi­ness, cit­i­zen­ship and the media meet the inter­net; and the oppor­tu­ni­ties, role and lim­i­ta­tions of new tech­nolo­gies in learn­ing.”

• Lewis & Clarke Law School Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts of speak­ers and events.

• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Law School
  • Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety iTunes Web Site
    • These tech­nol­o­gy-focused lec­tures are giv­en by a diverse group of fac­ul­ty, many from uni­ver­si­ties oth­er than Stan­ford.
  • Pro­gram in Law, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy iTunes Web Site
    • This pro­gram focus­es on the role that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy play in the nation­al and glob­al are­nas. The issues dis­cussed in these pod­casts will inter­est stu­dents, legal pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­peo­ple, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and the pub­lic at large.
  • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy is a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of lawyers, law stu­dents, schol­ars, judges, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and oth­er con­cerned indi­vid­u­als work­ing to ensure that fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human dig­ni­ty, indi­vid­ual rights and lib­er­ties, gen­uine equal­i­ty, and access to jus­tice enjoy their right­ful, cen­tral place in Amer­i­can law.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Law School Fac­ul­ty iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A lit­tle bit of legal brain can­dy pre­sent­ed by the U Chica­go law fac­ul­ty.

• Yale Law School Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts from one of Amer­i­ca’s finest law schools. Often fea­tures speech­es by vis­it­ing speak­ers.

Stay tuned — this page will be under con­tin­u­al and active devel­op­ment. It will grow as more law schools devel­op new pod­casts.

Lawrence Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford, has made a big name for him­self by devel­op­ing a sus­tained cri­tique of how Con­gress, at the behest of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, has pro­gres­sive­ly sti­fled cul­tur­al and sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion by extend­ing the dura­tion and scope of copy­right laws. Out of this cri­tique, Lessig found­ed Cre­ative Com­mons, a non-prof­it which issues copy­right licens­es that allow authors and inno­va­tors to retain some con­trol over their works yet “ded­i­cate [them] to the pub­lic domain” where they will con­tribute to the flour­ish­ing of new cul­ture. And, even bet­ter, Lessig has pub­lished some of his own impor­tant works under these licens­es, includ­ing Free Cul­ture: How Big Media Uses Tech­nol­o­gy and the Law to Lock Down Cul­ture and Con­trol Cre­ativ­i­ty. What this means is that you can freely access the book in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent for­mats (click here to pick), even an audio book ver­sion. This makes it utter­ly easy to find out what Lessig’s ground­break­ing argu­ments are all about. It gets his think­ing out there, into the com­mons, and vig­or­ous­ly shapes the debate on copy­right law. It brings about a free flow of ideas, the very thing that Lessig cares most about.

Read­ers may also want to check out Lessig’s pop­u­lar blog as well as his nov­el attempt to use a pub­lic wiki to update his book, Code and Oth­er Laws of Cyber­space.

Final­ly, you may also want to check out the recent work pub­lished by Lessig’s peer at Yale, Yochai Ben­kler: The Wealth of Net­works. Though released in hard­cov­er, it is also freely avail­able in wiki and PDF for­mats.

The Google Book Search project ran into anoth­er road­block last week when a group rep­re­sent­ing 400 French pub­lish­ers joined anoth­er law­suit brought ear­li­er this year in French courts. The upshot of the law­suit is essen­tial­ly the same as the suit brought by a con­sor­tium of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ers last year: They’re look­ing to put a quick end to Google’s bid to make the book uni­verse as search­able as it has made the world­wide web. Actu­al­ly, to be clear, it’s not the project itself that’s mak­ing pub­lish­ers run to the courts. Rather, it’s Google’s assump­tion that it can scan and index mil­lions of copy­right­ed books — just as it has cached bil­lions of web pages — with­out first get­ting per­mis­sion. That,
the law­suit claims, is clear copy­right infringe­ment.

Google’s defense rais­es a series of fas­ci­nat­ing (and com­pli­cat­ed) legal ques­tions about copy­right in the dig­i­tal age. The com­pa­ny’s first line of defense is to argue that the pro­gram falls under the fair use doc­trine. Here’s the basic log­ic: Although Google Book Search must index com­plete copies of books to make the print uni­verse search­able, users only get small snip­pets of copy­right­ed text in their search results, which fall under “fair use.” The key assump­tion here is that there’s a crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion between what hap­pens on the back end and the front end. It does­n’t mat­ter that Google has indexed full digi­tial copies of text on its servers. The only thing that counts is what users see, and if users only see small snip­pets, fair use applies and no pub­lish­er per­mis­sion is required. But, just to be safe, Google will hon­or explic­it pub­lish­er requests not to include con­tent in the book search pro­gram.

Along­side the fair use defense, Google has also put for­ward a larg­er argu­ment that gets to issues we dis­cussed in the Lawrence Lessig piece. After being hit with the first major law­suit, Google took the PR offen­sive, and Eric Schmidt, the com­pa­ny’s CEO, wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Jour­nal, which con­clud­ed with this:

“Imag­ine the cul­tur­al impact of putting tens of mil­lions of pre­vi­ous­ly
inac­ces­si­ble vol­umes into one vast index, every word of which is
search­able by any­one, rich and poor, urban and rur­al, First World and
Third, en toute langue — and all, of course, entire­ly for free. … This egal­i­tar­i­an­ism
of infor­ma­tion dis­per­sal is pre­cise­ly what the Web is best at;
… pre­cise­ly what copy­right law is ulti­mate­ly intend­ed to
sup­port.”

Here, Schmidt offers the reminder that copy­right law exists for the ben­e­fit of soci­ety first and fore­most. Yes, copy­right law pro­tects the rights
of authors and pub­lish­ers. But only as a means to anoth­er end — that is, pro­mot­ing cul­tur­al devel­op­ment and the growth of the cre­ative
com­mons. Schmidt’s pas­sage gives some insight into the very large ben­e­fits that Google Book Search can deliv­er. But, there is obvi­ous­ly
much more to it, and I’d high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing this lengthy fea­ture sto­ry — Scan This Book! — that appeared ear­li­er this year in the New York Times Mag­a­zine.

Some­where in the legal process, it seems, a judge will need to look at how things net out. Does it mat­ter that Google makes full dig­i­tal
copies with­out per­mis­sion if it shows only snip­pets to users? (In oth­er words, does the tra­di­tion­al taboo against mak­ing full copies of texts get over­rid­den by the prac­ti­cal fact that full copies won’t be giv­en away to users?) And does this uncon­ven­tion­al move get trumped by the fact that Google’s project offers so much social promise? The judge will take a look at this, but some­where along the way, I sus­pect, he might focus on this one issue: Ama­zon already has a sim­i­lar pro­gram under way. It index­es book con­tent to allow cus­tomers to review books
before mak­ing a pur­chase deci­son. The only dif­fer­ence is that it gets pub­lish­er per­mis­sion first. Giv­en that Ama­zon has rolled out its
“Search Inside” pro­gram fair­ly suc­cess­ful­ly, the obvi­ous ques­tion gets raised: Why can’t Google also get per­mis­sion first and sim­ply avoid putting a judge in a posi­tion to make a rul­ing that risks ful­ly open­ing up Pan­do­ra’s box? One of Google’s sec­ondary argu­ments for its pro­gram
is that, with its huge mar­ket share, Google Book Search will bring atten­tion to pub­lish­ers’ books and help them gen­er­ate new sales. If
that’s true (and it almost sure­ly is), it seems no less true that pub­lish­ers will have every incen­tive to con­tribute their works to Book
Search and get on board with the project. Mean­while, Google Book Search will grad­u­al­ly ful­fill most of its promise. Under this sce­nario,
pub­lish­ers and authors win, as does Google and soci­ety. It seems like a com­pro­mise posi­tion that makes a lot of sense.

Resources:

Copy­right’s High­way: From Guten­berg to the Celes­tial Juke­box — Excel­lent book on the his­to­ry of copy­right law and its evo­lu­tion with new tech­nolo­gies.

Stan­ford Copy­right and Fair Use — Anoth­er thor­ough resource for under­stand­ing copy­right and fair use.

The Google Print Con­tro­ver­sy: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy — You can get a range of impor­tant texts and opin­ions on this sub­ject here.

More Google inter­nal views on Book Search:

• Why We Believe in Google Print
• Mak­ing Books Eas­i­er to Find
• Buzz About Google Print and the Law­suit
  

Final­ly, I would def­i­nite­ly check out Lawrence Lessig’s 30-minute pre­sen­ta­tion on the Google Book Search con­tro­ver­sy. This will get you more than up to speed.