Prof. Larry Lessig gave his keynote speech on "The Read/Write Society" at the end of the second day of the Wizards of OS 4 conference (read part 1 and part 2 of our WOS 4 coverage). He began by telling the story of John Philip Sousa, an early 20th century American composer who believed that the development of first voice recording machines would "ruin artistic development" and cause "the vocal cord to [be] eliminated". A year ago, I heard him use this example at the opening of ccPoland, where he used it to show how those with stakes in more traditional forms of cultural production can block the growth of novel forms - as is happening today with p2p technologies, for instance. This time, Larry Lessig pointed out a different issue - that the "machines" that Sousa was complaining about were in fact killing a more decentralised and grassroots form of cultural production. Times when "young people together [were] singing the songs of the day or old songs" were coming to an end.
Larry's argument is that while the capacity to produce, and not just use cultural products was largely lost in the 'Read Only' 20th century, a 'Read / Write' culture is re-emerging in the 21st century. We are observing an ongoing conflict between the two cultures on the internet. The first one is extremely efficient, enabling consumption anytime and anywhere. At the same time there is constantly perfecting control over this consumption. Opposed to this is a culture of re-creativity, which he illustrated with a series of video mash-ups. My favourite example is that of Jonathan Caouette, who was shooting film with his video camera all throughout his life. At the age of 30, he edited his footage into a movie called "Tarnation", which cost him $218 and became a hit at the Cannes Film Festival.
Read Only and Read/Write forms of production are from two different cultures. The former is largely passive and supported by the strict copyright system. The latter dwarfs Read Only culture by not only the size of content produced, and the social, educational or political merit, but also by its huge economic potential. The current tragedy, according to Larry Lessig, is that weapons used to fight piracy kill Read/Write culture as well, by destroying its technical infrastructure. Larry Lessig pleaded to WOS 4 participants to defend this culture, as he did a month ago at Wikimania. Read/Write culture has to be defended from DRM technologies, supported by the development of free codes and protocols as well as free licensing models, and finally practiced by consumers who become creators.
Larry Lessig's talk, while sketching out an important metaphor for thinking about contemporary culture, left out the issue of involvement in Read/Write culture. Currently, it is a culture largely located in the niches, with the commons being a relatively small bubble that popped up, squeezed itself into the bit of free space left by the gigantic body of Read Only culture. Very few people are in fact infected with the cultural productivity virus, though their works are easily amplified on the internet, creating maybe an illusion of plenty. And masses of people are not interested in taking advantage of what technologies offer them. Yochai Benkler, when asked about this a day before, was an optimist. He pointed out research showing a generational change in participation in cultural production. Once again, the ball seems to be in the open and we'll have to wait a decade or two to see what our culture will become.
Earlier in the day, Larry Lessig and Benjamin Mako Hill took part in a workshop discussion on licensing issues. Benjamin Mako Hill is the author of a text titled "Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement". In it, he accuses Creative Commons (CC) of not defining core freedoms that would allow people to clearly define a license as free or not. "But by failing to take any firm ethical position and draw any line in the sand", he writes, "CC is a missed opportunity."
The WOS 4 workshop was the first opportunity for Larry Lessig and Benjamin Mako Hill to discuss the subject in public. Larry began by stating that this is not a discussion between idealists on one hand and pragmatists on the other. The difference instead stems from the fact that while critics like Benjamin believe in a single standard of freedom of content, Larry prefers the idea of multiple standards. Each creative community, he believes, should develop its own standard of creative freedoms to protect ' just as programmers such as Richard Stallman have done for the FLOSS community. Most probably, this will result in multiple, differing standards of freedom. Otherwise, Larry said, drafters of core freedom standards become colonial, telling others what is right. The price that has to be paid, as Jaroslaw Lipszyc pointed out, is the possible fragmentation of the pool of cultural content.
I was left with a sense that there is no possible middle ground between the two positions. For people who think like Larry Lessig (to whom I must admit I belong), the work of defining a set of core freedoms is the work of those in many creative communities. For Benjamin Mako Hill, the definition of freedom is based upon ethics, making it difficult to accept alternatives. There seems fortunately to be enough space in the free culture movement to support both a strong ethical stance and a more inclusive, open one. Coming out of the workshop, yet again I felt that a high level of impatience, a need to see certain results instead of observing the ongoing process, is present in a movement only several years old. While the pessimists see our licensing schemes as 'not free enough', I consider every use of the different CC licenses, no matter how restrictive, as a signal, a little flag planted firmly, declaring that a given work is a commons-based piece of cultural territory.
tags: culture wizards-of-os4 wos4 lessig readwrite-web web readwrite production
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