Lessig: America’s Most Important Pessimist
Darwin “Print Is for Losers” Magazine has a pithy interview with the most depressing man in America, Lawrence Lessig. Unfortunately, Lessig — a national treasure — has earned his pessimism. In short, he’s right. Imagine a prophet with a law degree.
The interview gives an excellent overview of Lessig’s thought. Every answer is quotable, so, almost at random, here’s Lessig on the threat to innovation:
The reality now is that every new innovation has got to not only fund a development cycle and fund a marketing cycle, it’s got to fund a legal cycle during which you go into court and demonstrate that your new technology should be allowed in the innovative system. In that context, there’s an extraordinarily high burden on innovation …
(There’s more on a related topic – Real World End User Licenses – right below…)
[I am very reluctant to mention myself in the same breath as Lessig who is, as I’ve said many times before, one of my heroes. But Darwin also today published a column of mine on the three precepts of digital rights management.]
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