AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Another “How About” Moment

As Lawrence Lessig (and other sources) have reported over the last few days, Congress will shortly consider an act that would make it illegal for corporations or institutions to induce others to violate copyright law (which Orrin Hatch, sponsor of the bill, seems to define as “making applications that may easily be used to share files that might be copyrighted”). He infers — from the legislative agenda — that this act will come up without hearings, and be enacted within a few weeks.

This is bad news, whatever one’s stand on copyright and digital media. So it occurred to me that the Net community might assemble a compilation of texts (and for that matter, audio files, images, whatever) from some pf the persuasive spokespeople in the argument. Prof. Lessig has already released Free Culture under a Creative Commons license — perhaps there’s a usable excerpt from that, or a speech he’ given before (I think I recall that several of his presentations have been published under a CC license). Cory’s talk at Microsoft; a version of what David said at Microsoft this week; Dan’s take on studios and their cartel. . . . You can think of more, no doubt, and someone — not me, this time, I’m on deadline — could compile into an XML/PDF book. I know from experience that such a demonstration could stir up attention, which is what this misconceived legislation needs.