Archive for the ‘copyright’ Category

Presenter’s Guide to Copyright from Alvin Trusty on Vimeo.

Creative Commons PowerPoint from Alvin Trusty on Vimeo.

I met Lawrence Lessig this evening (he’s the skinny one in the picture).  He gave a lecture at BGSU – From Copyright to Corruption and Back Again.  The talk was a little less than an hour and in true Lessig style had more than 650 slides.  I talked with him for a few minutes before his presentation.  I only had time for a couple of questions.

Q1 – Who is the tougher crowd?  A room full of college students or the US Supreme Court?

A1 – Definitely the college students.

Q2 – Who will win in the end?  Shepard Fairey, Mannie Garcia or the Associated Press?

A2 – I actually represent Shepard, so I’m a little biased.  He will win.

It was a pleasure to meet the founder of the Creative Commons foundation.  Lessig said (for the first time in public) that more than 350,000,000 works have been licensed with some form of Creative Commons.  He talked mostly about copyright, but has shifted his energy to a campaign against corruption.  Combining the efforts of Change Congress with a new (yet to be named) group, the goal is to change the way money gets to politicians.  One statistic he gave was that the average investment with a lobbyist in Washington D.C. gives a 22,000% return.  He then gave example after example of how congress has made the wrong choice in legislation, choosing the side of the lobbyists over represented constituents.  If the money can be taken out of the equation, politicians should stop voting like idiots and start representing the people who elected them.

The talk was informative, entertaining and inspiring.  If you have the chance to sit in on a lecture, I highly recommend it.

When it comes to copyright infringement, it helps to be famous.  When artist Shepard Fairey wanted to create a poster during the presidential election, he went to Google.  There he found a picture of Obama, and without seeking permission from the photographer, he used the photo as the source of his artist work.

Under copyright law, this is called a derivative work and creation of such works is under the control of the owner of the original work.  Fairey did not know who owned the photograph he used.  He did not both to check.  He certainly did not have the permission of the work’s owner to create a derivative.

It took a year to determine that the photo was taken by Mannie Garcia, a photographer on assignment for the AP.  Garcia says he photographed Obama for twenty months and saw the poster many times.  He even snapped pictures of the poster.  He says it looked familiar, but he did not realize it was his picture until someone else figured it out.

If Garcia writes a book including famous photos he has taken, will he have to ask Fairey for permission to publish a picture of the poster based on the photo taken by Garcia?

Lawrence Lessig has a new book. Remix examines a culture where artists have gotten no more money, businesses have gotten no more profit and 70% of our kids have become copyright criminals. In the video below, Lessig talks about the book on The Colbert Report. Watch the video. Listen as Stephen pleads with the audience NOT to remix the video, especially with a great dance beat.

Of course, the next week, he had to show everyone the remix.

And there are even more if you look on YouTube.