Category: Obsessions

Via Copyfight, an excellent article at Legal Affairs about Larry Lessig’s speech at Swarthmore. Okay, it’s not actually about that at all: it’s about the background of the whole jumbled movement, its ties to and distinctions from Marxism, and how and why these things are happening now. It’s an excellent primer on free culture, and I learned some things from it myself.

My favorite part, which I like because it’s so clearly and simply stated:

“If you give people the opportunity to create, they will do so, even without economic incentives. The core justification for intellectual property protection is that, without it, no one would have any reason to produce cultural, creative content. They would undertake a rational calculus and go off to become tax attorneys. But the dynamism of the open source movement shows that this fundamental justification doesn’t hold.”

I’m sorry, I just need to repeat that a couple times.

“If you give people the opportunity to create, they will do so, even without economic incentives.”

“If you give people the opportunity to create, they will do so.”

My brother had an AIM away message for a long time that was a quote from one of his professors, er, Woody Allen or Frank Zappa or somebody, like “Communism didn’t work because people like to own stuff.” I liked that quote, and I agree with it. I like owning, just for me, my computer and my backpack. I like owning a collection of nice felt-tip pens and original cartoon art. I like owning some ice cream.

But the best thing about reproducible art–text, comics, software or music–is that everybody with an appropriate container can own it at the same time. The infinite advantage of bits over atoms is that you can give them without giving them away.

Put another way, free culture works because people like to own stuff.