Here’s a video file of it, but it requires Windows Media Player, so I can’t watch it on my Mac.
Anyone want to convert it to a more usable format please, so more of us could enjoy it? Thanks ahead of time!
A number of people have sent me
(It’s still a pain in the ass to have to use a format that requires its own player.)
This is a very interesting article because it explores the political solution to Copyright extension that will have to be pursued if we lose with the Supremes.
By Steven Levy (with John Horn, Eleanor Clift, and Brad Stone):
Glitterati vs. Geeks
Lessig worries about letting his supporters down. “If I thought that this was a case where it’s hard to know what the right answer was, I’d feel less pressure,” he says. Lessig knows that Eldred v. Ashcroft is the best chance to turn the tide in Silicon Valley’s war against Hollywood-a conflict where Hollywood has won every round so far. If he fails in court, the fight “would have to shift to the political arena,” he says. “And there, we’re outgunned.”
Aaron Swartz has written up his Eldred experience.
They dropped us off in front of the Supreme Court, where Lisa Rein and others set up camp. “We’re an emerging society!” Lisa said, jumping up and down. Seth put down his bags and hung his suit on a tree. Lisa asked us all who we were and why we came and videotaped our answers. We talked, ate pizza (we asked them to deliver it to the Supreme Court (1 First Street), which they did) and played Set long into the night.
Some of the greatest artistic phenomena in the world (like jazz) would never have been allowed to be created if today’s copyright laws had been in existence back then.
What an excellent, timely art exhibit.
Thanks to Kendra Mayfield for writing such a great story for Wired News about it:
Art: What’s Original, Anyway?
If current copyright laws had been on the books when jazz musicians were borrowing riffs from other artists in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators were creating cartoons in the 1940s, entire art genres such as hip-hop, collage and Pop Art might never have existed…
To acknowledge this landmark case, an exhibit will celebrate “degenerate art” in a corporate age: art and ideas on the fringes of intellectual property law.
The exhibit, Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, will take place in New York from Nov. 13 to Dec. 6 and in Chicago from Jan. 25 to Feb. 22.
“Almost all art, to a certain extent, is unoriginal,” said Carrie McLaren, publisher of Stay Free! magazine and organizer of the exhibit. “(In) an environment where you can have free exchange of ideas, you get better art.”
This just in by Michael Grebb for Wired News:
Justices Doubt Free Speech Link
Eric Eldred, who brought the case in January 1999, runs a burgeoning website that has posted the text of some 50 rare and out-of-print books whose copyrights have expired. Outside the court, he said the justices sent mixed messages.
“They asked some tough questions,” he said. “But it’s hard to judge how they’ll rule.”
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, said Congress will most likely overturn the CTEA on its own even if the court upholds it.
“Hollywood pushed something through Congress, and nobody was watching,” Shapiro said. “There is no question that this legislation would not pass Congress today. Five years ago, we should have opposed this. We made a big mistake.”
Shapiro, an industry veteran who’s observed dozens of cases, said you can’t always tell how the court will rule based on the questions they ask. “I don’t read too much into the justices asking questions.”
Below is what I managed to write at 3am from the front steps of the Supreme Court. I meant to post it that night, but things started getting really hectic as the hour of 6am approached because we had to all take turns going back to a room I had rented close by so we could all change into our court clothes and dump off all of our blankets and stuff.
I’m going to keep posting these in small segments, but I will be putting them all together into some kind of a comprehensive document next week (I’ll be on the road till next Tuesday.)
Enjoy!
Justices Hear Arguments in Challenge to Copyrights
By Linda Greenhouse.
The justices appeared to agree that there should be a limit somewhere, but not that they should be the ones to impose it. “I can find a lot of fault with what Congress did here,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told Professor Lessig. But she added that “it’s very difficult to find the basis in the Constitution for saying” lawmakers do not have the right to set the limit even if “it’s longer than one might think desirable…
“Is there any limiting principle out there that would ever kick in?” Justice O’Connor asked. An explicitly perpetual copyright would be unconstitutional, Mr. Olson conceded. He said that even if extending existing copyrights did not induce new creative efforts, Congress was entitled to have other goals in mind, like giving copyright holders a continued financial incentive to keep their works in distribution.
Professor Lessig’s argument was exactly the opposite. The Internet had brought about a “fundamentally important changed circumstance” in the traditional copyright equation, he said, by making the public domain so readily accessible and therefore raising the stakes in keeping copyrighted material flowing into the public domain.
Well it was an incredible experience waiting in line overnight to hear the Eldred argument.
Me and my buddies were joined by a number of neat people over the course of the evening.
I’ve made a movie of the whole experience, and am waiting till Friday to fly home so I can spend all day tomorrow writing and posting and uploading photos and the like. (Movie footage won’t be up till early next week.)
But first I’ve got to seriously catch up on some sleep!
Court to Review Copyright Law
By Amy Harmon.
So I’m here in DC and I’m about to go get in line overnight for the Eldred argument tomorrow.
Why am I getting in line the night before, you may ask?
Just in case 🙂
I’ll be making a little movie about waiting in the Eldred line and the experience in general.
Wish me luck!