In Defense of Piracy

Professor Larry Lessig has a must-read piece in the Wall Street Journal where he argues that “digital technology has made it easy to create new works from existing art, but copyright law has yet to catch up.”

…how is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there’s some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music? “Let’s Go Crazy” indeed!

It doesn’t have to be like this. We could craft copyright law to encourage a wide range of both professional and amateur creativity, without threatening Prince’s profits. We could reject the notion that Internet culture must oppose profit, or that profit must destroy Internet culture. But real change will be necessary if this is to be our future — changes in law, and changes in us.