The Guardian interviewed Lawrence Lessig on the BBC Creative Archive yesterday (free but annoyingly extensive registration required). Excerpt: "The project exploits the BBC's position as a publicly funded broadcaster in a very clever way. Whereas most media organisations depend on controlling distribution of their products for their bread and butter income, the BBC has a charter obligation to make its products as free and accessible as possible. So while the majority of media companies continue to fret over internet piracy, the corporation can concentrate on getting involved in the broadband revolution....Lessig helped the corporation meet its legal challenge. It is his Creative Commons licence that the BBC has refashioned to get the archive off the ground....The quasi-perpetual copyright terms lately secured in the US, and heading swiftly for the EU, are steering us towards a new feudalism that will stunt the growth of the knowledge economy. Lessig explains this idea: 'The fight against feudalism was the fight against property regimes that had become so expansive and cumbersome that they choked off innovation and competitive growth. Much of the progress of the common law in England was the process of limiting the burdens of property law, so that property could become something you could transfer - use, reuse, and the competitive market could take off. Now we've recreated feudalism in the context of intellectual property.' "
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/21/2004 07:54:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
