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lessig.org
Lawrence Lessig advocates copyright alternatives. Could they work for mainstream news? |
At this year's
LinuxWorld conference, Stanford Univ. law professor
Lawrence Lessig (one of the founders of
Creative Commons) gave a keynote speech where he discussed one of his favorite themes: "free culture."
You can download or stream the audio of Lessig's talk from PodTech. Also, his book Free Culture is available for free online.
Lessig discusses the difference between "read-only" and "read/write" culture, where anyone can take images, words, and sounds from the culture around us and remix them to create new, unique, authentic expression.
"This is the literacy of the 21st century," Lessig declared. He also claims that read/write culture can peacefully coexist alongside read-only culture (as controlled by copyright law). Neither approach need displace the other.
Obviously, news is a huge part of global culture. Generally it seems that news organizations have resisted loosening restrictions on their content to allow for its use in remix culture.
But I wonder: is there some way that news organizations might beneficially leverage tools such as Creative Commons licensing to allow and encourage derivative works from news content?
... is the potential for false news that looks like...
