John Perry Barlow, call for massive civil disobedience January 6, 2007
Netzpolitik did an interesting interview with John Perry Barlow, EFF founder and song writer for the Grateful Dead and the String Cheese Incident, following Larry Lessig’s most excellent keynote (video) from the 23C3 hacker conference in Berlin. The interview came after a debate with Lessig during the Q&A where Barlow suggested that massive civil disobedience may be the only way the public can crash the broken restrictive copyright system we have now. He does make a good point. Here is part of the transcript from the interview,
“My view is if we just keep pressing the system where it breaks, eventually the system is so broken and so obviously broken that there’s no choice but for people to start evolving another economic model. And that’s actually what’s already happening. Rather rapidly. […] if you wanna share something - share it. If you wanna use something - use it. Try to do so ethically in the sense that, you know, don’t take things without attribution, attribute. Make sure that the people who did create actually have the opportunity to get some enhanced reputation […]pay no attention to these people when it comes to being creative. Go ahead and do the stuff that Larry showed in the beginning of his talk and do lots of it. And every time they put a lock on - break it. And every time they pass a new law - break that. You know. Sooner or later they’re dealing with such a massive level of civil disobedience that they have to address it. And that’s where we’re headed in a, I think, a hell of a hurry.”
I don’t know for sure how to fix the serious problems with a copyright law that was bought and paid for by the entertainment industry but this just might work.
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