Larry Lessig is talking about — guess what — copyright. And more. He is a fabulous presenter. You feel smarter just hearing his voice.

He begins by wondering what would had happened to photography if the courts had decided that you had to have permission before taking someone’s photo. In fact the courts did decide this, but went for

In 1800, only the publication of commercial works was regulated by copyright. You could transform it without permission. And all non-commercial works were free. Over time, the law of copyright was changed to cover more non-commercial works. In 1909, the word “publish” was replaced with “copy” in order to cover things like copying statues, but the “copy” word accidentally meant that the scope of the law was increased as there were more machines for copying. Had “publish” been kept, we would not have been tempted to regulate, say, photocopiers. By 1995 and the Internet, we’ve lost the division between the commercial and noncommercial because the law is regulating copying. Copyright now covers uses of content, not just the publishing of commercial content.

Larry asks whether this is, overall, good or bad. We can agree (he says) that it’s good to protect commercial published works on the Internet. Even transforming copyrighted published materials is good: Grisham can control and benefit from the movie that’s made of his novel. But is it good for non-commercial copying and transforming? Maybe it makes sense to control some of the non-commercial. But we need to ask.

Larry shows the hysterical mix of Bush and Blair singing a love song to each other and points out that it’s illegal. “We should be changing the law to fit the changing technology.” We have to protect authors of course, but our response has been to go to war…a war against our children. We should in fact lock up the real pirates who run off illegal CDs. But transformation of culture, fan fiction, and 12-year-olds sharing content should not be the subject of our war. “We’re seeing a land grab.”

The consequence: If you think about what we could be doing if we were free to share and transform. We are squandering our opportunity “because those who have the power and time and patience to spend time in Wasington are succeeding in redefining the rules to mean that to share or transform you need permission.”

What do we do? Larry at first thought we should reform the law “because the tradition speaks on our side of the battle…We’ll just appeal to the values of our framers.” It is, he says, hopeless. Instead, Larry is working to change within the law: Creative Commons. It’s a set of tools to mark content as free…to let a reasonable layer of permission sit on top of copyright law.

“It’s been framed as pirates vs. property. But there’s also a tradition in which we build upon our pasts and we want to give people permission to be part of that tradition.”

Someone asks about civil disobedience. Larry tells of an RPI student who was sued for indexing RPI files, 25% of which were MP3s. The RIAA sued, asked how much the kid had saved, and settled for that amount ($12,000). Disgusting and depressing.

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