| OSCON FLASH: Lessig to Abandon Pulpit, RMS Reveals Halo |
malcolm dean
San Diego, CA -- Known for its balmy weather, this home to a major portion of the U.S. Navy enjoys steady breezes. But the winds at O'Reilly's annual Open Source Convention are blowing from a decidedly political direction. Gone is the Rodney King ('Can't we all get along?') flavor of last year's mind-meld with Microsoft, replaced by rising alarm at the broad damage current U.S. legislation and Supreme Court cases may do to the creative engine which gave rise to the Internet Age.
In his second-to-last speech to the Open Source and Free Software communities, Prof. Lawrence Lessig warned that "never before has there existed such control of culture by so few. We've done nothing to stop them from making this a less and less free society." Lessig plans to devote himself to a forthcoming Supreme Court appearance, and to his new endeavor, the Creative Commons.
The rapt audience watched Lessig give a fresh variation of his lecture on the history of copyright and the bizarre extensions now being shoved through Congress. The Stanford Law School professor began with 18th-century British legislation which ultimately made Shakespeare free to all, and quickly proceeded to the 1928 case of Steamboat Bill, an early film character which Walt Disney "ripped and burned" as Steamboat Willy. Willy ultimately became Mickey Mouse, but the current management of Disney does not acknowledge that much of its most lucrative output is based on free sources such as the Brothers Grimm, or on ideas taken from other artists.
"Modern copyright law bears little resemblance to the intention of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution," Lessig believes. "Creativity always builds on the past," he said, warning that without this freedom to create fresh works out of old, our social and technological wellsprings are in danger of drying up. "Nothing is being done by this Community," Lessig told the hundreds of developers attending the conference. "Your freedom to code is being taken away."
Faced with the difficulty of explaining the subtlety of the situation to the Supreme Court and Congress, Lessig warned that Washington is a bumper-sticker culture. "If you have to explain it, you're losing," he said. "If you don't fight for your freedom, then you don't deserve it."
Richard M. Stallman followed Lessig, raising alarm over initiatives that will essentially outlaw current PC architectures. If special interests succeed, he believes manufacturers will have to include policing technology which might be used to report back to copyright owners any unapproved use of content or software, paralleling attempts by the current Administration to create a network of neighborhood minders and snitches.
The controversial President of the Free Software Foundation called on the audience to stop conceding that copying or sharing is an infringement of copyright. For Stallman, the creation and dissemination of Free Software is a moral choice that informs his life activities. Often criticized as an extremist, Stallman shared his sense of humor by donning a vestment and halo, reintroducing himself as Saint IGNUcius of the Church of EMACS.
"We have Saints, but no Gods," he said, over raucous laughter. "Repeat after me: There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." Stallman said the best way to deal with the steady encroachment of proprietary systems and laws is to "install Holy/wholly Free OSes and use Free Software."
At a press conference following their presentations, Lessig and Stallman admitted that getting their messages out is difficult. Lessig believes that the computer industry must act in its own self-interest, keeping in mind that it is ten times bigger than Hollywood. Lessig believes that Intel and Apple are finally beginning to understand the need for them to speak out against current legislation.
"There is nothing more practical than idealism. Self-interest is freedom," Stallman responded.
O'Reilly founder Tim O'Reilly hopes that the public will connect the present dangers with current corporate malfeasance (or malfeeance, as President Bush so insightfully called it). "There are many practical drivers for self-interest," he said, stating optimistically that while the negative forces now arrayed in Washington may prevail for now, they will probably lose in the long run.
George Orwell fans, however, will understand the concerns of the final questioner, a librarian, who noted that federal publication collections are moving from being neutral purveyors of public information into dangerous territory. Now that so many publications are issued digitally, she noted, libraries are simply pointing their browsers to government servers, which means that the government is entirely in charge of the availability and accuracy of the publications. In the emerging corporate information tyranny, you will no longer have the right to preserve a copy of a publication, which means that the Ministry of Truth will be actively editing history to conform with Big Brother's Thoughts du jour.
Two speakers. Two warnings. As usual, OSCON is double-plus good!
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Copyright © 2002 by Malcolm Dean. Reproduced by DesktopLinux.com with permission.
About the author: Contributing Editor Malcolm Dean is a writer and IT strategist based in Los Angeles.
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