Lawrence Lessig: Governments Always Get It Wrong
Well, after a couple of decades of battling copyright extensions, the famed cyberlawyer Lessig has detected the Real Problem: government. In this Economist article, he proposes to improve the "transparency" of government activities through the Internet.
Of course, we all wish his enterprise well to expose the venality of individual (most?) politicians and of individual (most?) of the laws they propose and vote for. But if his enterprise actually succeeds to any extent, I expect (with unbearable eagerness) it will expose the venality and destructiveness not just of individual politicians and laws, but of government - and copyrights - themselves.
Comments (7)
Person
Oh yeah, totally. Except for copyrights that came about through contract (which is all of them). Those are cool. All the other ones are blatantly unjust socialist state interventions.
Published: December 14, 2007 11:17 AM
Blouge
Person, your comment doesn't make any sense. Do you even understand what you are typing??
For example, this statement of mine is automatically copyrighted by virtue of the fact that I wrote it. Therefore, by reading this, you have imposed certain state-enforced obligations on yourself, without having chosen to enter into any contract.
Published: December 14, 2007 12:39 PM
Person
Okay, you're right. I forgot about that. Then limit it to the set of works where a copyright is specifically asserted at the beginning or well-known. Then there's a contract and it's totally okay.
Published: December 14, 2007 1:17 PM
Joseph Huang
a "contract" that is not signed.
i can write a contract that says you owe me $40000, but if you didn't sign it, it has no binding value.
Published: December 14, 2007 4:00 PM
Blouge
Maybe copyrights should be established through "contracts":
END READER LICENSE AGREEMENT (ERLA)
By continuing to read this, you agree to respect the copyrights of this message creator. If you disagree, you must stop reading this message and destroy all copies. You may read this message free for commerical or non-commercial use. However, "Person" must pay license fees of $2000 for reading this.
Published: December 14, 2007 5:41 PM
ww
Merry Christmas!!1
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Published: December 15, 2007 12:25 AM
Jardinero1
A properly constructed contract requires each party to provide a consideration.
Published: December 17, 2007 1:14 PM