In a speech given at the Italian parliament earlier this month titled “Internet is Freedom”, Lawrence Lessig prominently addressed issues recently discussed in this blog: as argued in “Reflections on Abolitionism: Copyright and Beyond“, he painted the picture of fighting extremists – abolitionists on the one, copyright zealots on the other hand -, thereby presenting himself as the sensible moderate seeking a middle course. So far, so business as usual.
What struck me was the particular compromise Lessig suggested: referencing the book “Promises to Keep” (2004) from his Harvard Berkman Center colleague William Fisher III and the German Green Party, he advocated for introducing a “Cultural Flat-rate” (see “Extending Private Copying Levies: Approaching a Culture Flat-rate?“).
While the short clip above delivers those 6 minutes of Lessig’s half an hour long speech that deal with abolitionism, copyright zealots and the Cultural flat-rate, I can only recommend watching the whole speech at blip.tv.
(leonhard)
governancexborders.com 
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March 18, 2010 at 02:22
Crosbie Fitch
There are essentially three positions:
1) Copyright is fine – it just needs better enforcement/education
2) Copyright is fine, but inappropriate to the net – replace with compulsory license (aka Internet tax)
3) Copyright is an instrument of injustice – abolish it and revert to free market
They more or less map to maximalist-reformist-abolitionist.
NB the abolitionist expects those who want art produced to commission it, i.e. to compensate the artist for their labour. It is a mischievous sleight of hand for the moderate reformist to insinuate that the abolitionist would have artists labour without compensation.
March 18, 2010 at 15:12
Ulrike Höppner
Thanks for the link, just went back to Lessigs Code 2.0 for a new paper, so this is good reminder. However, the really complex problem seems to be, that behind and within each of the three positions there is a number of assumption about
– why people create and produce (i.e. motivation)
– the role creation and innovation play in society
– the role economic interest should play in society
The culture flat rate than is usually contested, because it assumes some unusual answers to the above questions:
– people do art for many different reasons
– art is a value in and of itself
– economic interest – it’s actually rather undecided on that, it depends on how it would be implemented
Anyway, at the level of these questions there seems to be the major disagreements.
I am also not sure, in how far you can think of culture as apart from different forms of knowledge (inventions, science etc.) Nonetheless, debates on culture flatrates can do a lot to get us ahead.
September 20, 2011 at 11:15
Pirate Party Win in Berlin: Transnational Implications? «
[…] members feel comfortable being associated with “Pirates” (see, for example, “Lessig on Abolitionism, Copyright Zealots & the Cultural Flatrate“). The similarity to the origins of the Green Party, which also emerged out of several […]