Fifth – That is some funny right there. :) I’ve always viewed the libertarians as a parasite on the body of America politics. Without a functioning nation they could never survive on their own.

The overall idea that “conservatives” embody notions of “fellowship” or “ecology” any more or less than liberals do is just pure rubbish. Or at least, the track record from the last 100 years or so with regards to civil rights and greenhouse gasses isn’t very convincing.

The thing that should be scary to a room full of liberals is that this guy can make a muddled and weak presentation like this one and still be a professor at Harvard.

I do like videos with gratuitous edits to Wikipedia, though.

The arbitrariness of copyright laws should be a clue that they don’t rest on solid ethical foundations.
Worse, the utilitarian argument fails too. See Patents and copyrights: do the benefits exceed the costs?

We have a choice. Create a government so large and so powerful we live in fear of it becoming a self-perpetuating megalith, or keep government so small that it lives in fear of us, the citizens.

If you prefer the latter, guess what, you’re conservative (and probably Libertarian). And if you want it to happen, be willing to take on a LOT more personal responsibility. Stop turning to government to try to solve everything.

I don’t believe that there is a strong correlation between the government’s size and its corruption or oppressiveness. Take a look at this table. Haiti and Singapore are indistinguishable from a government spending perspective, and I’d bet anything that Singapore(16%) feels more oppressive than, say, Sweden(58%).

Now, clearly there is a correlation between the size of a corrupt government and the amount of damage it can do. But that’s not the same thing.

I’d like Republicans and Democrats to get firmly on the good-governance bandwagon. But I don’t think there is any hope for the Republicans (or the libertarians for that matter) because the more obviously corrupt and incompetent government is, the better their “shrink government” message plays.

Also, if you go to Transparency International, you’ll notice that many of the governments we think of as “government megaliths” have minimal corruption.

France has a “bigger” government than we do, but judging by the size and violence of their anti-government demonstrations, it’s hard to argue that the citizens of France live in fear of their government.

Finally, you could gut our government spending by ending Social Security. But that would have a trivial effect on the size of the federal bureaucracy. For the amount of money involved, it just doesn’t employ that many people or have that many rules; it’s a small government program that seems huge because its purpose is to move money around.

From my ground-eye perspective, Social Security takes about $10/week from my paycheck, and in exchange society promises me that — whatever else happens — I probably won’t spend my last years eating out of dumpsters. Yeah, I feel so oppressed by that.

As are most progressives (see above) he is firmly set in his middleoftheroadism ways. In the “2007 tour de force” linked in the OP he decries “extremism” on either end of the copyright debate, showing preference for arbitrary laws that are simply more to his liking.

However, there should be distinction between “Conservatives/Republicans”, as illustrated in the video and “Libertarians”.

Lessig first uses the contradictions between the church-going and market-centric sides of more typical conservatives and then segues into “remix culture”- which is dominated by a more Libertarian culture.

He uses Walt Disney- an avid Republican- as the poster child for “proto-remixing”, failing to recognize that Republicanism of a more “Goldwater-era” has a much closer and stronger relationship to Ron Paul Libertarianism than it does to post-Reagan Neo-Conservativism.

HOWEVER, this is still very-very stimulating- to say the least.

Who could afford to “own” the Hudson River? You? Not me, I know that much. A river would be owned by an entity with enormous resources, like, oh I don’t know, a huge corporation, perhaps. (Even if that means buying it from the riverbank landowners.)

So, now that GE “owns” the river, I suppose that in your libertarian utopia free from the shackles of public ownership of natural resources and government regulation, that however much dumping GE chooses to do is their right because they “own” the river.

As I previously stated, sounds good on paper, but in practice it would leave us at the mercy of corporations, who as we all know can always be trusted to do what is in the best interest of the general public.

2. Libertarians arent as bad as every cons (see neo-cons, the religious, the mentally ill).

3. Even the bible has 1 or 2 good ideas but why accept 90% garbage for 10% good?

There is very little good that comes from conservatives, lets not pretend that they are decent people.

And this is different with liberals in charge how?

Lessig’s got half the picture with his movement to eliminate corruption in politics but he misses the main point… the more government, the more corruption. The more dollars to be gotten from the government, the more influence peddling.

Simple logic.

So because existing regulations are weak, we should just get rid of them altogether? Huh? Oh yeah, I’m sure Enron and AIG would have been MUCH quicker to reform if they were left to their own devices. And Ken Lay would have convicted himself and volunteered to go to prison before dying suddenly.

When people feel that there is a government there to to protect them, they will, quite naturally, do less to protect themselves.

And to believe that every Libertarian does not want a Federal Highway Administration, an EPA, a DOE, etc is a pretty narrow view. Many Libertarians are very pragmatist. You can update government to match the times without wholesale abrogation of Constitutionally defined liberties and governmental limits.

Perhaps it is time to write some letter…

Excellent presentation as usual by Lessig. Also shows that it’s hard to pin people into one of two categories. I may be conservative but I share similar liberal views on many issues. That’s why I vote for individuals not a single party.

I will try to lurk less and engage more often.

Thanks

There are two camps of people who realize this:
1) The successful entertainment industry lobbyists
2) The informed citizen who has spent time contemplating the necessity of copyright laws.

Now ask yourself, ‘who is more likely to get legislation passed in their favor?’
——————
“Lessig always seems inches away from the proper solution, which is simple and elegant: repeal copyright laws.”

It’s unfortunate that such a simple solution doesn’t yield enough $$$ for corporate interests to make this suggestion viable. Either his inner republican or the burnout from losing his battle over DCMA has Lessig shying towards the ‘reform’ path because it’s the ‘safe bet?’ If he were truly a champion of freedom he’d be calling for abolition, instead of compromising on how the government can allow companies to control our culture.

But hey, at least the man helped found CreativeCommons

The principal issue with copyright law is that its length has gone in completely the wrong direction. Life + 70 years makes no sense when the act of publishing and distributing media now takes seconds, as compared to 1790 when the copyright term was just 14 years. Today, 3-5 years should be more than enough to ensure reasonable compensation (and of course, there is nothing to prevent somebody from continuing to use and sell their work after their copyright has expired, they just aren’t the only ones allowed to do that!).

The second issue is that making derivative works the exclusive domain of the copyright holder causes a huge stifling of innovation. Either people break the law and we get cool remixes like those shown in Lessig’s talks, or we end up with little room for public participation. Thankfully, in a lot of cases, there is a “look the other way” attitude that many companies take in regards to the creation of derivative works. (For example, fan art/fiction is technically a violation of copyright, as asinine as that seems.)

Copyright can exist, and it can do what it needs to do well. There’s no need to abolish it; it just needs to be fixed.

It’d be funny if it was just “Anarchy for rich people, doood.” but it’s not, it’s just a modernized non perversion focused version of Sade’s philosophy. Which sounds cool, but it’s not. Note he was so for people not being responsible for old silly traditions when for instance he was arrested for hiring a hooker (on a Sunday and blaspheming as much as screwing her) but relied on the police/his station to protect him from the “Common Man” such as when a man found out he’d used his daughter and tried to shoot him. For all it’s pages and pages of RandDroidian gibberish, Libertarianism is just the “Smithers” worshiping “Mr. Burns” hoping to be allowed into the upper class and the harder he can sugar coat the suck-up the better.

And this guy talked a lot without saying anything. He’s just spreading propaganda and anti-Obama smears.

If he really was doing anything, he’d have when he got to McCain pointed out the obvious, how ironic it was because McCain himself supported the copyright issues that were later turned against him on YouTube. That is, anyone crying “It’s MINE!” is believed first, so any troll can get anything taken down, even if the original artist approves -or- it’s TOTALLY original content. Because, if they don’t, the site becomes a “Criminal Partner in Copyright Infringement” and lots of the “Right Wingers” would LOVE to take YouTube down in a second by quickly obtaining a multi-million dollar judgment against a company with assets they could seize.

Really, the 90s are over and “Libertarianism” is the zombie monster that needs a headshot before it bites anyone else.

I am right-wing. FAR right-wing. So far right-wing that I get really, really nervous when anyone talks about monkeying with the core values set forth for the US in our founding documents.

These days that makes me a Libertarian, not a Republican.

The Bush-style conservatives are happy with a huge government that happily invades and erodes the privacy, self-determination, and other core freedoms essential to the principle beliefs of the Founders. I’m not. Look at the inherent mental disconnect most neo-cons have WRT abortion rights versus gun rights.

Think on this. Anything you give government control over eventually becomes the Department Of Motor Vehicles. With all the associated bureaucracy, waste, and inefficiency.

We have a choice. Create a government so large and so powerful we live in fear of it becoming a self-perpetuating megalith, or keep government so small that it lives in fear of us, the citizens.

If you prefer the latter, guess what, you’re conservative (and probably Libertarian). And if you want it to happen, be willing to take on a LOT more personal responsibility. Stop turning to government to try to solve everything.

Flame on.

You mention a feedback loop, but who is to say that that feedback loop is the most efficient way of getting things done, or even works at all?

Analogy time: If Joe Blow shoots me in the leg, I suppose that instead of having them be arrested and charged with a criminal offense, I could instead start a campaign to inform the public that Joe Blow is a bad person who shoots people in the leg, sue Joe Blow for depriving me of the use of the leg and the medical expenses incurred, etc., but you know what? It’d be a lot more just if we just made it against the law to shoot people in the leg.

How is this different from a corporation polluting a river? It should be illegal to pollute a stream (above a certain threshold) regardless of whether the people downstream are poor or wealthy.

Market-driven solutions are great starting points for policy, and there’s no reason to have a government do something if a market can take care of the problem just as well. But markets are not perfect. Transaction costs exist. Information is asymmetrical.

In a transparent government, I have rights as a human being. Under corporate power, I only have rights commensurate with my spending power. I prefer the former to the latter.

If you prefer the latter, guess what, you’re conservative (and probably Libertarian).

Except that’s not true. There are lots of movements generally considered left-wing liberal, but are centered around community involvement rather than encouraging big government. The “left” have as many differences of opinion as the “right” on that.

Another feature of this scenario can be that the US government has ceased shelling out trillions of dollars for weapons and so GE is reliant on consumer goodwill for its existence and therefore is very much at the mercy of “us”.

Corporations do not always act in the best interest of the general public but absent government granted monopolies and privileges (copyrights and bailouts among them) they are at the mercy of the market.

So, government by lawsuit.

ACTA is not an Obama initiative…it was started in 2007. I find it immensely disappointing that Obama hasn’t done anything about it (especially given his support for net neutrality, in words at least, during the campaign).

Sonny Bono was a moderate Republican. Showing a picture from TV Guide from 25 years prior to his election doesn’t change that. If Newt Gingrich stumps for you…you’re a Republican.

McCain doesn’t champion fighting the DMCA, and it’s a misrepresentation to claim otherwise. His Campaign sent plenty of letters to Youtube when their videos with potential fair use violations were removed, as per DMCA requirements. But what has McCain done since his failed election attempt about the DMCA? Nothing. What had he done prior to it? Nothing. Had it not directly affected his livelihood, he never would have said anything (and let’s be honest, it was his campaign team, no McCain himself.

I’m not saying that there aren’t Republicans who agree with Lessig or that he’s not spot-on about many Democrats (Clinton gave us the DMCA, after all). But I think he’s twisting some stuff in knots to support his thesis and it doesn’t hold water under scrutiny.