You Could Answer for Lawerence Lessig

Okay, I'm holding a contest of sorts: you, the reader, can answer questions for Lawrence Lessig, renowned copyright law expert and advocate for the continued creativity of people in spite of the severity of the copyright system.

Founder and chief advocate of the Creative Commons Public License, Professor Lessig has given numerous talks about the subject of copyright and why a private solution (such as the Creative Commons license) is necessary in today's harsh copyright climate. Though he doesn't advocate stealing of other peoples' works, he is nonetheless a strong advocate for the return of fair use and public domain works. The more I learn about the man, the more impressed I am that he's the one who has the answers.

The problem is, a man in his position is incredibly busy. I've managed to get a few words out of him here and there, but email is positively horrible when everyone wants to speak to you. He implied an agreement with me (one which I came up with), where I would get other people to answer the questions. These questions would then go through a filtering process and then the good Professor Lessig could then sign off on the answers that are closest to his position on each question. It's a creative solution to the problem of time.

The theory behind it is that if other people speak for Professor Lessig, then he can not only save time by merely having to read (I can't speak for Lessig, but my own typing speed is less than a quarter of my reading speed), and then indicate which ones are the most correct answers to the question.

The top winner of the contest will receive... a tee shirt. Completely free of charge. I'll even pay shipping. How's that for a prize? The tee shirt will say something like: "I answered Lawrence Lessig's questions and all I got was creative freedom... and this tee shirt.") And be aware that this prize comes out of my own pocket: Professor Lessig has nothing to do with this blog or its operations (other than continuing to inspire me to write, which he does without his consent).

The questions I'd like answered are below:

1) With copyright laws being enforced and changed to such a draconic level, is there any hope that they might be changed, or is the copyright system doomed to failure by abandon?

2) What differentiates fair use from infringing use under the law? Is there an actual determining factor, rather than simply the wording of the law itself?

3) It was implied at the TED speech that public domain no longer exists. What happened to public domain?

4) If the case is extremism on both sides, then what can determine prevalence? From a logical standpoint (as well as an historical one), if both extremes are wrong, then compromise is likely not going to be possible so long as the extremist voices continue. So how do we get the two sides of the equation talking to one another, if one side (or both) is offering its own olive branch?

5) This was after looking up your (CC) license, and because I'm interested in using the CC-GPL for a software package I'm working on. In the Creative Commons license, the site claims that there are no compatible licenses. However, I notice that the GPL is listed with what amounts to a Creative Commons rider. If this isn't compatibility, then by what standard is compatibility measured?

6) Using the perspective of history, we can see an equivalent to the "arms race" of the Cold War era brewing. From this same perspective, what was the most likely catalyst for change to lessen the escalation of arms?

6a) Could the same logic be applied to catalyzing a "leveling out" of the extremism in the copyright war?

Deadline: December 31, 2007 at 12 noon GMT. If you're a minute late, you won't get a prize, even if you nail the whole thing.

Entry: Drop a comment below. Each comment should answer as many of the questions as possible, and I do have moderation turned on to eliminate spam, but not stupidity. I am a firm believer in the right to speak, so even if you tell me "Your blog sux0rz, d00d!" it'll be published without changing a word.

Limitations: There is a limit of one answer per question. However, if you answer the same question multiple times, the last answer is the only on which will count.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines: Yes, I intentionally left the ladies out. But that doesn't mean that I'm limiting the field only to men. Please be aware that any comments seen to be sexist, racist, or otherwise offensive could be removed. And because I'm not really looking for them, these comments might slip past my amazing anti-spam technique. Speech which is offensive for a purpose related to explaining one of the questions might be okay, since I also believe in the right to offend (though I don't typically go out of my way to do so). But please limit your usage of the N-- word, the F-- word, and the rest of those to emotional outbursts and appeals to emotion.

Good luck!

Free Speech and Profanity

There are a lot of people who believe that profanity should be protected by free speech. I happen to disagree, but I also disagree that it should fail to have the protection of free speech. This seeming contradiction is due to my own belief in something else that democracy has to offer: freedom of choice.

If you don't like what someone is saying, you always have the right to shut them off, to go somewhere else, to ignore them, or to confront them. The idea that mere words, though vulgar or obscene, should be limited because they are offensive flies in the face of the principle of free speech. While I disagree with shouting a string of obscenities for the sake of shouting them, I think people who are really angry should be able to shout vulgarities in their speech, if only to express the emotional impact that a particular topic has had on them. In addition to showing a person's emotional state, vulgarities show a state of mentality, and such mentality can attract like-minded individuals or repel those who disagree. Society must police itself if it wants to eliminate the vulgar, not rely on the laws of government to restrict the right to cuss.

I swear sometimes, I'll admit it. Many people who read the foregoing believe that I'm in favor of swearing. I'm not. I'm simply against the idea that government should be involved in its abolition. The appropriate use of swearing is to shock people to their senses by using a strong word. Take "balderdash" for example. Balder was a god from the Nordic pantheon, way back before the Christians converted everyone in Europe by force. Balder was impervious to harm because Balder's mom extracted a promise from everything in the world. Everything, that is, except for Mistletoe, which was considered an unimportant tree parasite... and since dear old mom had already asked the Oak trees on which mistletoe grows, it was thought to extend. But then old Loki came along, trickster god that he was, and made an arrow out of the stuff. Meanwhile, the other gods were busy throwing rocks and shooting arrows made of things like oak and aspen at Balder. It was a great trick, watching inanimate objects uphold their promises to do no harm to the God of Beauty and Courtesy. But the blind god, Forseti, felt left out of the fun.

A woman named Bestla came up and offered Forseti a shot at Balder with a bow and arrow. Forseti protested on account of the fact that he was blind. Bestla offered to aim the arrow for him, so that he could be sure to aim it right at Balder. He agreed, and she did, and the arrow flew... and struck Balder right in the heart, killing him instantly. The shock and outrage that flew throughout the courtyard called for Forseti's death, and then Bestla's. But Bestla was not her real name. Her real name was Loki, and she'd tricked Forseti by having him shoot an arrow made of mistletoe right into Balder's heart. Mistletoe is therefore called balderdash. How it came to be used for kissing under is related, but not important to the point I'm trying to convey. But the cuss word from the 1800's implied so much more than that.

The word in the 1800's implied nonsense, but it also implied that someone or something was parasitic in nature. It further implied that this parasitic nature was the cause of all evils and ills, not just the immediate problem, and that whomever had suggested the item which caused the utterance of that horrifically obscene word was about to kill God. The word was not used in polite society. The closest word we have today has less implied, far less background, and a more crude direct meaning. That word is "bullshit".

However, in the 1800's, balderdash was considered much more offensive of a word, because it required a knowledge of its background and how it came to be in order to be offended. But in the American West, it fell from disfavor and was replaced by "bullshit" as the choice for swearing, particularly because male bovine excrement was actually pretty well everywhere. Mistletoe wasn't. Therefore, in the absence of familiarity with what mistletoe even is, we stopped using a swear word. Ironically, the word fuck is used today as a catch-all swear word in almost exactly the same way, though with an entirely different background and meaning.

The point is, obscene words change with culture. Laws generally do not. Old laws don't often get reviewed and thrown out with the trash. Even bad laws which hold no relevance to modern culture and which are often the target of ridicule are rarely removed. And bad laws exist, as do laws which are poorly worded. Laws that try to limit obscene materials and fail miserably can often attribute that failure with a lack of familiarity with that material. It's a conundrum: either you review it so you can be well-informed, and possibly violate your personal principles in the process; or you don't review it and make a law which may be irrelevant the moment it passes into law.

There isn't a really great solution, except possibly to ask people who are familiar with it about whether or not it would stop it. Those who are familiar with it and still against it can often tell you. And if there's nobody familiar with it who is against it, then what you have is a perfect product, and it deserves investment instead of restriction.

Obscenity laws, especially where they relate to language, just don't make sense. Laws that restrict nudity to artistic exhibits make more sense than removing nudity altogether. We're born naked, and nudity is a natural state of being. There is nothing wrong with the display of the human body for purposes of art. I've personally attended a viewing of the Statue of David. I'm a guy, and I certainly have no homosexual leanings, but that's a body I think I'd kill to have. Well, maybe after just a few more cheeseburgers...

Likewise, artistic expression that contains offensive words should be labeled as such. I'm not against labeling something to prevent unintended offense. However, there are times when we need to be offended. I myself get offended on a regular basis. I had a neighbor, recently, who told me that if he accepted my hospitality, he'd be disrespecting himself. I found myself wondering if he had a habit of refusing hospitality, or if he simply didn't like me. And then several negative implications of what he said hit me. I was incensed. He later asked me for my hospitality, which, rather than extending again, I declined to extend, politely pointing out that his rude statement didn't sit well with me, though I didn't mind him visiting. I didn't swear. I didn't need to. My simple statement said it all.

If people are taught correct principles, they tend to use them. One of the principles I was taught was tolerance, and another was patience. I was patient, in that I didn't blow up. I felt angry and offended, but I was patient enough so that my refusal had its full impact. And I was tolerant, because while we disagreed and there were consequences, he is still free to believe what he will about the comment that was made. No law needed. No obscenity required. See? Social values work. Tolerance doesn't mean allowance. It means limitation of allowance. It's another one of those fundamental principles of democracy, whether in our country or another.

Swearing is unpleasant. It's supposed to be. It expresses an emotional impact that those with limited vocabularies and limited time to formulate a concrete idea can use in order to achieve the same results as my long-winded speech. All of the above was summed up by a friend of mine:

"Laws against swearing are bullshit. They don't fucking need to exist."

And that, as they say, is that.

My next post is going to be about a topic we all love to argue about: religious freedom in the US. Those of you with strong opinions on the subject, prepare arms for my comment box: I'm not about to pull any punches. I'm religious, proud of the fact, and pissed off at the zealots who think it's fun to say that everyone else is going to Hell. I'm going to bring my Bible, Torah, Koran, Baghavad-Gita, Tao te Ching, Poetic Edda, and the Upanishads. It'll be fun, I promise... well, not for everyone, I'm sure. I also plan to bring rational denial to the table, which is more popularly known as atheism. I'm no atheist, but those who fail to listen to them (or any other religious group... yes, calling atheists a religious group pisses off a lot of people) is going to be limiting.

That article will also be about diversity, racism, intolerance, and maintenance of group identity. I'm gonna slam people. Well, politely. Until next time!