In this NY Times Review of Books piece, Adam Cohen reviews Stanford professor Larry Lessig‘s important new book, “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity” (Penguin Press 2004). The illegal downloading of music over the Internet has brought attention to copyright issues more than at any time in America’s history, and Professor Lessig has been at the forefront of the “copyleft” movement, which advocates a common sense rethinking of our copyright laws to facilitate creativity and the free exchange of knowledge. As Mr. Cohen notes in his review, Professor Lessig has an entertaining way of pointing out the frivolous nature of many copyright disputes:

For the silliness to which copyright battles frequently descend, it is hard to improve on Lessig’s story of the Marx brothers telling Warner Brothers, after it threatened to sue if they did a parody of ”Casablanca,” to watch out because the Marx brothers ”were brothers long before you were.”

Professor Lessig’s theories are based upon the historical use of ideas, points out Mr. Cohen:

Lessig grounds his argument about the new rules’ impact on the culture in a basic observation about art: as long as it has existed, artists have been refashioning old works into new ones. Greek and Roman myths were developed over centuries of retelling. Shakespeare’s plays are brilliant reworkings of other playwrights’ and historians’ stories. Even Disney owes its classic cartoon archive — Snow White, Cinderella, Pinocchio — to its plundering of other creators’ tales. And today, technology allows for the creation of ever more elaborate ”derivative works,” art that builds on previous art, from hip-hop songs that insert, or sample, older songs to video art that adds new characters to, or otherwise alters, classic films.

The societal threat of the copyright explosion ultimately is constriction to the development of new ideas:

The result of this explosion of copyright, Lessig argues persuasively, is an impoverishment of the culture. Corporations now have veto power over the use of copyrighted materials, in many cases long after the creators themselves have died, and they can use that power to lock up a significant part of our cultural legacy. At a ridiculous extreme, Lessig tells the story of a filmmaker who tried to get clearance for a several-seconds-long shot, in a documentary about Wagner’s Ring cycle, of stagehands watching ”The Simpsons” backstage during a performance. The Simpsons’ creator, Matt Groening, gave permission. But Fox’s vice president for licensing, as Lessig tells it, demanded $10,000 for the rights and added, ”If you quote me, I’ll turn you over to our attorneys.”

In the meantime, Stephen Manes over at Forbes.com is not as impressed with Professor Lessig’s book:

Man the barricades for your right to swipe The Simpsons! According to Stanford law professor and media darling Lawrence Lessig, a “movement must begin in the streets” to fight a corrupt Congress, overconcentrated media and an overpriced legal system conspiring to develop “a ?get permission to cut and paste’ world that is a creator’s nightmare.”
That’s the gist of Lessig’s inflammatory new screed, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity ({(C1)}Penguin Press{(T1)}, $25; free online starting Mar. 25). A more honest title? Freeloader Culture: A Manifesto for Stealing Intellectual Property.
“There has never been a time in our history when more of our ?culture’ was as ?owned’ as it is now,” Lessig huffs. Huh? In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s a handful of companies exerted ironclad control over the movie, radio and record businesses; Xeroxes and tape recorders were nonexistent. Though “cut and paste” was limited to scrapbooks, creators of all stripes somehow managed to flourish.
Contrary to Lessig’s rants, today’s technology has made creators freer than ever to devise and distribute original works. But technology has also given consumers powerful weapons of mass reproduction with strong potential for abuse. The intellectual property issue of our time is how to balance the rights of creators and consumers.

In this post, Professor Lessig responds to Mr. Manes’ criticism.
We all need to become better informed about this increasing risk, and Professor Lessig is a valuable teacher on these issues. You can bet that his book is on my reading list.