from information week:
** Law Prof: Lawyers Threaten Open-Source Movement
SAN FRANCISCO--Stanford Law School professor and cyberspace expert Lawrence Lessig exhorted software developers Wednesday to lend their voices and money to defeating intellectual-property laws that he says chill innovation.
Speaking at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here, Lessig said new regulation on electronic content distribution--and the changing nature of the Internet--threaten to alter the balance between free distribution and controlled content. Lessig has advised the courts on the Microsoft antitrust case, written on Internet law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. "You shouldn't like me--I produce lawyers for a living," Lessig said. "You built an extraordinary platform for innovation, and my kind is working to shut it down."
The Internet's architecture doesn't discriminate by content. "That system is being changed," he said. Unlike traditional telcos, cable TV and wireless telcos can favor certain types of traffic. And U.S. laws, such as the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which makes it illegal to distribute tools that can be used to circumvent copyrights), give Hollywood "perfect control" over how its content is distributed, Lessig said. Ultimately, "certain companies and certain nations are in better positions to innovate than others."
And open-source advocates aren't helping matters by attacking all intellectual-property protection with "crude" oversimplifications, Lessig said. The problem is, he said, too many find it "more fun to blather on [open-source message board] Slashdot" instead of actually doing something about the problem. Entertainment lawyers and big IT companies have "seized the high ground," he said. "The people who can make a difference in this battle are you." - Aaron Ricadela
For more background, read Tales From The Encrypt http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eER10BvjNe0V20RmN0AL
Federal Court Hears DVD Case Appeal http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eER10BvjNe0V20RmO0AM
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--ravi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.