Boing Boing

Lessig's five-point net proposal to Congress

Larry Lessig has identified five net-related issues that Congress should address this session, and he's promised to post a fifteen-minute presentation on each (presumably to coincide with the national legislative attention-span):

Copyright: Orphan Works: Orphan Works legislation is critical. Nonetheless, I strongly oppose the Copyright Office's "Orphan Works Proposal." I think it is extraordinarily unfair to current copyright owners, and insanely inefficient. My proposal applies an "Orphan Works Maintenance Requirement" to older works only; the requirement is a form of registration.

Copyright: Remix Culture: Congress should carve a robust exemption to the law for non-commercial remix. Commercial use of such remixes should be regulated by a baseline statutory license.

Network Neutrality: No surprise: I support Network Neutrality legislation. Unfortunately, too many of the reigning proposals are, imho, radically too difficult to enforce. I'll propose a much simpler rule to enforce that would achieve the legitimate objectives of NN.

Spam: The email system is broken. A bizarre of private remedies to deal with spam now clog the system to defeat many of its original objectives. I'll propose a modified version of an earlier idea to deal with this problem – a problem that costs the American public many times the total profits of the recording industry, but has gotten but a fraction of Congress's attention.

Harmful to Minors Material: There's a simple and minimally burdensome way Congress could protect kids online from material deemed "harmful to minors." Not perfectly, but certainly better than the current regime. And without constitutional risk.

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