Rating: 
Summary: Good, current and readable
Review: This is the third in a series of books by Professor Lessig. The Future of Ideas and Code were excellent in setting the context of the debate about intellectual property. But this book adds to those significant contributions.
The author has an interesting ability to bring in anecdotes that enliven his narrative. He also is able to relate in somewhat painful detail his intervention in the Ellred case - where the Supreme Court denied the ability of a person to publish a poem - that by any reasonable standard should be in the public domain. He discusses the role of Jack Valenti (MPA) and the RIAA in trying to alter the balance of interests between the producers and the consumers of ideas.
Finally, professor Lessig makes two more sets of contributions that are important to help us understand the dynamics of an arcane issue. First, he does a great job at setting the context for the debates about intellectual property - some of this builds on what was written in his two earlier books - but it is valuable none-the-less. Intellectual property and physical property are not the same and should probably not be considered co-equal under the law.
At the same time he makes a great set of suggestions about how to balance the rights of producers of ideas and consumers.
The original debate that got Americans concerned with these issues began between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who argued over the appropriate scope of the "progress clause" in the Constitution. Lessig follows in that great tradition and adds to our knowledge.
Rating: 
Summary: Take Back Your Creative Rights
Review: "Free Culture" is an amazing look at the battle over both creativity and culture in America today. Using wonderfully insightful examples, Lessig demonstrates how the past has formed the future, and how the present knee-jerk responses lawmakers have over new technology and their interests in special interest lobbyists (RIAA, MPAA anyone?) have severely affects and limits our rights to creative culture. Lessig forces us to ask ourselves difficult questions as he explores how we can best push copyright law and property so that present and future generations can own our highly important cultural past and consequent future.
Rating:
Summary: Take Back Your Creative Rights
Review: "Free Culture" is an amazing look at the battle over both creativity and culture in America today. Using wonderfully insightful examples, Lessig demonstrates how the past has formed the future, and how the present knee-jerk responses lawmakers have over new technology and their interests in special interest lobbyists (RIAA, MPAA anyone?) have severely affects and limits our rights to creative culture. Lessig forces us to ask ourselves difficult questions as he explores how we can best push copyright law and property so that present and future generations can own our highly important cultural past and consequent future.
Rating:
Summary: Feudalism depended on maximum control and concentration
Review: A free culture supports and protects creators. The internet has established the ability for thousands to participate in the building and cultivation of culture. Laws regulating intellectual property have been laws against piracy. Copyright law regulates both republishing and transforming the work of another. Disney's great creativity was built on the work of others. In 1928 the average term of copyright was thirty years. Today public domain is presumptive only for work created before the Great Depression. In the world free culture has been broadly exploited. Japan has a huge market of knock off comics and does not have many lawyers. We celebrate property but there is plenty of value not subject to the strictures of property law. George Eastman created roll film and the upshot was the era of mass photography. The real significance was not economic but social. Now the internet allows creations to be shared, web logs, blogs, have grown dramatically. Blogs are a virtual public meeting. They are unchoreographed public discourse. Bloggers are amateur journalists. John Seely Brown of Xerox believes we learn by tinkering. Recording music, radio, cable TV all were technologies involving forms of piracy. The piracy problems were solved by legislation. Peer to peer sharing was made famous by Napster. It is not clear that the file sharing has caused the decline in the sale of CDs. In 1710 the British parliament adopted the first copyright act. In the last three hundred years the concept of copyright has been applied ever more broadly. The copyright law was a limitation on the power of book sellers. A decision in 1774 in the House of Lords held the limitation in the Copyright Act set forth the notion of a Public Domain. The common laws right of a publisher's monopoly was broken. A documentary film maker could not rely on the fair use doctrine in showing a short glimpse of THE SIMPSONS in an employee break room. The author claims that Jack Valenti analyzes intellectual property improperly. In 1790 Congress enacted the first copyright law. In 1976 the law changed the scheme and for all works created after 1978 there was only one copyright term, the author's life plus fifty years. For corporations the term was seventy-five years. An amendment to the law extended the term for an individual to ninety five years. Copyright protects derivative uses also. Technology researchers have been warned they may be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Technologies of the internet are open to snoops as well as sharers. The change in concentration and integration of the media is cause for concern. There should be an evaluation of the loss of independence. The author cautions that in the case of internet technology a land grab is taking place. Currently there is a widely punitive system tending to stifle creativity. The author believes that a reasonable balance between opposing interests in the area of intellectual property has been lost.
Rating:
Summary: Feudalism depended on maximum control and concentration
Review: A free culture supports and protects creators. The internet has established the ability for thousands to participate in the building and cultivation of culture. Laws regulating intellectual property have been laws against piracy. Copyright law regulates both republishing and transforming the work of another. Disney's great creativity was built on the work of others. In 1928 the average term of copyright was thirty years. Today public domain is presumptive only for work created before the Great Depression. In the world free culture has been broadly exploited. Japan has a huge market of knock off comics and does not have many lawyers. We celebrate property but there is plenty of value not subject to the strictures of property law. George Eastman created roll film and the upshot was the era of mass photography. The real significance was not economic but social. Now the internet allows creations to be shared, web logs, blogs, have grown dramatically. Blogs are a virtual public meeting. They are unchoreographed public discourse. Bloggers are amateur journalists. John Seely Brown of Xerox believes we learn by tinkering. Recording music, radio, cable TV all were technologies involving forms of piracy. The piracy problems were solved by legislation. Peer to peer sharing was made famous by Napster. It is not clear that the file sharing has caused the decline in the sale of CDs. In 1710 the British parliament adopted the first copyright act. In the last three hundred years the concept of copyright has been applied ever more broadly. The copyright law was a limitation on the power of book sellers. A decision in 1774 in the House of Lords held the limitation in the Copyright Act set forth the notion of a Public Domain. The common laws right of a publisher's monopoly was broken. A documentary film maker could not rely on the fair use doctrine in showing a short glimpse of THE SIMPSONS in an employee break room. The author claims that Jack Valenti analyzes intellectual property improperly. In 1790 Congress enacted the first copyright law. In 1976 the law changed the scheme and for all works created after 1978 there was only one copyright term, the author's life plus fifty years. For corporations the term was seventy-five years. An amendment to the law extended the term for an individual to ninety five years. Copyright protects derivative uses also. Technology researchers have been warned they may be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Technologies of the internet are open to snoops as well as sharers. The change in concentration and integration of the media is cause for concern. There should be an evaluation of the loss of independence. The author cautions that in the case of internet technology a land grab is taking place. Currently there is a widely punitive system tending to stifle creativity. The author believes that a reasonable balance between opposing interests in the area of intellectual property has been lost.
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: Although I am a frequent reader of Wired Magazine, Lessig's columns never really drew a lot of my attention. Somehow I popped into this book. I was very impressed by it.
Of course Lessig's primary goal is to make his point: that something should be done about the current copyright laws, rather sooner than later. But he is very accurate in weighing all the pros and cons of the current situation. On top of that, he has well thought of his own proposals to change the system. To me, that meant that Lessig did his best to be both objective and convincing. At the same time, he uses quite some humor and irony, which makes the book not only an interesting but also a fun read. Lessig gives you tons of examples that make you think: "That's not logical, why should we want to keep such a system?"
Of course, Lessig discusses the impact of MP3 on the music industry. He makes a very clear distinction in four different types of people who are using sharing networks: A) to substitute purchasing content, B) to sample content before purchasing it, C) to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer available, and D) to get access to free, not copyrighted content. If you think about it this way, you realize that only A is harmful to content creators. However, the point is that B could compensate for this. One could say there is some controversy whether or not the type-A harm is larger than the type-B benefit. Finally, there should be no problem with C and D, so completely forbidding P2P sharing will in every case do damage to a lot of usage that is not harmful.
Lessig makes clear that we are currently making use of technology in transition. Always-on, (wireless) broadband connections will be widely available in 10 years. Who knows how we will get access to content in 10 more years? Lessig claims that policy should be made on the basis of where we are going, not where we are coming from. Copyrights terms of around 100 years don't match with the technology we will all be using in the near future. For those interested, see www.creativecommons.org to find out more about the new copyright system Lessig and others are trying to set up.
Probably just like many other people I didn't bother so much about the issue of copyrights, if I ever thought about it at all. But this book gave me a lot to think about. The subtitle "How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity" actually gives a very good summary of the book, but you'll have to read the book to fully understand the importance of every word in that sentence.
I hope you'll read the book, too. And that there will be a growing group of people that will stand up to get the current system changed.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic -- a real eye-opener
Review: Crearly and engagingly written, this book not only illustrates how existing media companies fight innovation to keep themselves in control, but also inspires with the possibilities that are available if we find a way to overcome the resistance of the incumbents. The book is eye-opening in terms of history of copyright, intellectual property, US constitution (I didn't know it discussed intellectual property, but it does!), emerging technologies, and the future. The book shows how a commmon perception of copyright being private "property" of a creator is historically incorrect and socially un-desirable. A very worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: Permission Culture Rising
Review: For an exhaustive philosophical exploration of the current state of copyright law and its surrounding issues, you can't do much better than this screed from Lessig. While this book is occasionally opinionated and even polemical, Lessig has plenty of experience in the legal and practical consequences of copyrights to offer a heavily informed treatise on these issues. Lessig's best rhetorical tool here is the use of free market arguments, which should appeal to pro-corporate conservatives, to describe how the current application of copyright law restricts the free market of ideas as well as the freedoms of expression and public domain guaranteed by the Constitution. Here we find that copyright laws designed hundreds of years ago are being applied to new markets and technologies for which they were never intended, leading to an inequitable concentration of copyright power in the hands of a few rich and powerful corporations. Regardless of rhetoric about rewarding creators, current copyright laws enrich corporations into the distant future, rather than provide temporary incentive to authors while also building the public domain of creativity and ideas. In effect, we are on the verge of having to ask for permission from corporations in order to do anything creative, and Lessig shows us that this is not just paranoia, but has already been illustrated in real-life cases.
This book starts to run out of steam at Chapter 13 and thereafter, as Lessig broods on his own courtroom travails and proposes solutions that verge on the idealistic, at least in terms of current political realities. However, the power of this book is Lessig's almost shocking use of common sense, and concepts of participatory democracy, to shed light on the growing harms to the public and creativity that are engendered by the current application of unfair copyright laws. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating: 
Summary: ANOTHER COMMUNIST COLLEGE PROF SPEWS
Review: I am a person responsible for creating several orginal books, created out of nothing, adding to the public good, inspiring many, creating all kinds of jobs. I COULD NOT DISAGREE MORE with this Professor, another communist loosing himself and his ideas on our society. Why should my creation be at some point given away free to who, other publishers who can then publish it and make ALL the money. THERE is no such thing as FREE in this world, expect apparantly to overly idealistic Professors who do not live in the real world. Instead of only lengthening the term of Copyright for twenty years and then giving my creation away, they should let me and my family own it forever. Of course if this Prof actually created something that really connected with society and sold for decades I wonder who he would want to keep any earnings it might make. When is the BIG SCHOOL MONOPOLY with all their pie in the sky professors going to stop blaming BIG BUSINESS for all societies evils when in this case my copyright is all I have to support my family. I suppose the next book this nitwit will write will be about how all property owners and home owners should not own their homes and property but they should be open and useable and `owned' by all.
Rating:
Summary: Pay money for this book? Please. Don't insult me.
Review: I don't know how anyone can take Lessig seriously. He's leading the counter-culture movement with books like this, but if you buy that ideology then he's selling you out by publising with the big publishers. If you really want to read his arguments, download this book for free at http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/. He's finally starting to practice what he preaches. Think about copyright law for yourself. Read the copyright statute. Read cases. Don't take someone else's word for it. The exclusive rights system of copyright law predates the Revolutionary War. It exists because of technological changes (like Gutenburg's printing press), and (rest assured) it will surely survive the digital revolution. In other words, copyright isn't dead despite the current vogue in academia of saying it is. Bottom line: Don't be a dolt. Don't pay for this book.
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