Lessig at Personal Democracy Forum

I'm really enjoying Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry's Personal Democracy Forum at Pace University in NYC.

They started the conference off first thing this am with a Keynote from Lawrence Lessig. I'll post a few notes.

In brief: There’s a place for copyright, but let’s keep it in its place. There are limits to the copyright system. Obama is the only presidential candidate so far who has said that debates should be open – not proprietary content where you have to pay a network to view them later, and you can’t cut, paste, mix or edit. He’s concerned about corruption, feels candidates’ views are based on who will finance them.

Question from Jeff Jarvis in the audience: say someone went after a blogger (presumably for unfair use of text of a campaign debate, for example). What’s their defense?

Lessig – there is no defense really, I’ve defended fair use and it takes years of litigation. Companies comply with requests in order to avoid litigation. Fair use is really just the right to hire a lawyer. With debates, there’s an easy answer. Let’s not fight over it; debates should just be open. Brewster Kahle is allowing uploads of remix of politics.

Sylvia Paull asks: where copyright is disregarded, like in China, there’s a lack of creativity. Is there an inverse relationship between lack of copyright and creativity? Lessig: Good question.