protecting innovation: Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas should be required reading for anyone who finds the Internet interesting, useful, and/or fun. BusinessWeek online's interview with Lessig does a fairly good job of summarizing the main arguments of his book, which is basically that if we don't all act fast and turn things around, the Net as we know it is going bye-bye. So what should we do about this? Lessig says:
 A: First in context of copyright, Congress should pass low fixed compulsory license fees for distribution of [music and entertainment] content on the Web. Those fees should not be tied to reporting every usage on the Web. They should be determined the same way they are now for radio -- according to a sampling that gives some idea of what music is being played.
Second, Congress should repeal the 1998 DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which, among other things makes it a crime to circumvent copyright-protection technology]. We have no reason to believe that the market won't work well enough to prevent abuse. We don't need the federal government threatening prosecution.
Finally, Congress needs to not pass new legislation, like the [recently introduced] Hollings' bill that would mandate a police state in every computer [by requiring that copyright-protection mechanisms be embedded in PCs, CD players, and anything else that can play, record, or manipulate data]. (See BW Online, 3/27/02, "Guard Copyright, Don't Jail Innovation.") 
As you can see, Lessig's suggestions are really about what Congress needs to do, but if we still live in a democracy (a kind of big "if") then Congress should do what we ask it to do. Write your rep.
7:37:45 PM 
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