A quickie update on the Lessig in Three Seconds or Less contest:
I’ve been occupied with my son being ill this week & am extending the announcement date to Tuesday, Sept the 24th. I do so to make sure I get a chance to review all entries thus far fairly and without haste. I don’t imagine anyone will be too upset with that, hmm?
Here are the entries thus far: 1 & 2.
Feel free to submit additional entries until Monday, Midnight PMT.
Also, I had it suggested that, instead of a book, a donation might be made in the winner’s name to the EFF. Your choice. We’ll call the donation an even $50 US.
Straight up!->
Something everyone can relate to?
I read Lessig's keynote, and I've been thinking about the issues raised but I haven't had much time to really sit down and work through an effective way to catch the attention of the masses...
I keep returning to the open source systems that society is built on: alphabets, number systems, languages etc. I think it's easy to demonstrate quickly how we've benefitted from these systems that have developed without copyright restrictions. So much is a derivative work based on these socially shared assets.
Some attempts at getting this across:
"Nobody owns the rights to the language you are currently reading."
"If there were copyright laws when someone first developed 1,2,3,4,5...you'd calculate your taxes using I,II,III,IV,V."
This is just a start, I'm just trying to sound off some ideas. This isn't a polished campaign yet, and I think there are still some issues with this approach:
It should help people address the fact that every aspect of society was developed and/or a creative work by someone at sometime. I think that is interesting, but I think it needs to address that copyrights do have merit (works should be protected; just not indefinitely). Well, I'd appreciate any feedback.