Larry Lessig on Remixing (2007)

Larry Lessig did a talk in 2007 on the shear between the process by which people exercise creativity and current laws that restrict those very creative instincts.

Lessig asserts that the language that "our kids" speak is different than ours, in that we have been raised as a generation of content consumers, but our kids, largely because of the internet, have grown up with the instinct that they are able to both read and write content.  The fact that, in most cases, the participatory nature of of the "write" aspect is perceived to be in violation of copyright laws, is incidental, and effectively serves only to create an entire generation of criminals.

Jonathon Schwartz, when he was CEO of Sun Microsystems, one said that we had moved beyond the information age, and were entering the Participation Age.  As he said, "If the Information Age was passive, the Participation Age is active."

As insightful and well presented talk as it was, Lessig does not really address the fact that people who were born before the United States Civil War began only just (in 2010) had their works move into the public domain.  This issue is tangential to his core closing point, in that elements that deeply define our culture, and that were written before any person on the planet was born, somehow are still under copyright.  Lessig talks of laws violating common sense, and I think our current copyright terms clearly are among them.  It's too bad he didn't broach the topic in his talk.