Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity

Lawrence Lessig, "the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era" (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can't do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine. Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School and the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. The author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, he is the chair of the Creative Commons project. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School, he has clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. Preface Introduction "PIRACY" Chapter One: Creators Chapter Two: "Mere Copyists" Chapter Three: Catalogs Chapter Four: "Pirates" Film Recorded Music Radio Cable TV Chapter Five: "Piracy" Piracy I Piracy II "PROPERTY" Chapter Six: Founders Chapter Seven: Recorders Chapter Eight: Transformers Chapter Nine: Collectors Chapter Ten: "Property" Why Hollywood Is Right Beginnings Law: Duration Law: Scope Law and Architecture: Reach Architecture and Law: Force Market: Concentration Together "PUZZLES" Chapter Eleven: Chimera Chapter Twelve: Harms Constraining Creators Constraining Innovators Corrupting Citizens "BALANCES" Chapter Thirteen: Eldred Chapter Fourteen: Eldred II Conclusion AFTERWORD Us, Now Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: Examples Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea Them, Soon 1. More Formalities Registration and Renewal Marking 2. Shorter Terms 3. Free Use Vs. Fair Use 4. Liberate the Music - Again 5. Fire Lots of Lawyers Notes Acknowledgments Index