9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Lawrence Lessig: Thank you very much. It's extremely cool to be here. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's just about as cool as when I spoke at Pixar. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think of these two as being highlights of my career (check). 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, thank you very much for having me. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I have two small ideas I want to use as an introduction to an argument, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about the nature of access to scientific knowledge in the context of the internet, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and use that argument as a step towards a plea about what we should do. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So here is the first idea. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I want to call it the "White-effect". 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And I name that after Justice Byron White, justice of the US Supreme Court, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 appointed by John F. Kennedy - here he is in 1962 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - famous before that as 'Whizzer' White on the Yale University football team 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When he was appointed to the Supreme Court, he was a famous liberal, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 renowned liberal, the only appointee that John Kennedy had to the Supreme Court. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But 'Whizzer' White grew old, and he is probably most famous for an infamous opinion, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which he penned on behalf of the Supreme Court, Bowers v. Hardwick, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 an opinion where the Supreme Court upheld the Criminalization of Sodomy law. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Here is the passage: 'Against this background, to claim that a right to engage 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in such conduct' - homosexual sodomy - 'is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now, this is what I want to think of as the "White Effect". 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 To be a liberal or a progressive is always relative to a moment, and that moment changes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and too many are liberal or progressive no more. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, that's the "White effect". Here is the second idea. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Harvard Gazette is a kind of propaganda publication of Harvard University, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it talks about all the happy things at Harvard. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So here's an article that it wrote, about an extraordinary macro-economist, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Gita Gopinath, who has just come to Harvard, received tenure last year 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and is one of the most influential macroeconomists in the United States right now. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This article talks about her work and her research, and at the very end, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there is this puzzling passage, where it says: 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 'Still, the shelves in her new office are nearly bare, since, said Gopinath, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Everything I need is on the Internet now." ' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Right, that's the second idea. Here is the argument. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, copyright is a regulation by the State intended to change 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a regulation by the market. It's an exclusive right, a monopoly right, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a property right granted by the State, which is necessary 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to solve an inevitable market failure. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now, by saying that it's necessary to solve an inevitable market failure, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I'm marking myself as a pro-copyright scholar, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the sense that I believe copyright is necessary, even in a digital age. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Especially in a digital age, copyright is necessary to achieve 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 certain incentives that otherwise would be lost. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But in the internet age, what we've seen as a fight about copyright, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about the scope of copyright, waged most consistently in the context 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the battle over artists' rights, in particular, in the context of music, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 where massive 'sharing' - sharing which is technically illegal - has lead to a fight 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 fought by artists and especially by artists' representatives. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And we from the Free Culture movement, have challenged the people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who have been waging that fight. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And they defend copyright in the context of that fight. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But if we get above the din of this battle, the important thing to keep in mind 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is that both sides in this fight acknowledge that copyright is essential 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for certain creative work, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and we need to respect copyright for that creative work. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We, from the Free Culture movement, need to respect copyright for that work, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we need to recognize that there is a place for sensible copyright policy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to protect and encourage that work. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But, however - and here is the important distinction - 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Not only artists rely upon copyright, copyright is also relied upon by publishers, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and publishers are a different animal. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We don't have to be as negative as John Milton was when he wrote publishers are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of books 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - men who do no labor in an honest profession, to [them], learning is indebted." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We don't have to go quite that far to recognize why publishers are different, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that the economic problem for publishers is different 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from the economic problems presented by creating. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So who is copyright for? The publishers or the artists? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Well, since the beginning of copyright in the Anglo-American tradition, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the Statute of Anne of 1710, there has been this argument about whether copyright 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was intended for the publishers or the artists. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When the Statute of Anne was originally introduced, it gave a perpetual term of copyright, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which the publishers understood to be a protection for them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It was then amended to give just a limited term for copyright. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Publishers were puzzled about that, because it wouldn't make sense to give a limited term 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 if it was the publisher that was to be protected. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In 1769, a court case in the context of Millar v. Taylor seemd to suggest that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 despite the limitation of the Statute of Anne, copyright was for ever. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But in 1774, in a very famous case about this book, The Seasons, by James Thomson, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the House of Lords have held that copyright protected by the Status of Anne was limited, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 holding for the first time that works passed into the public domain. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And for the first time in English history, works including Shakespeare 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 passed into the public domain. And in this moment, we can say Free Culture was born. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it also clarified that copyright was not intended for the publisher. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Even if it benefited the publishers, it was a creative right (6:53)