I’m here at PDF this morning, clicking, typing, surfing with hundreds of other folks here.

Larry Lessig, professor at Stanford and founder of Creative Commons, is the first speaker of the day and he provided a thankfully caffeinated start on a dreary, rainy day.

Lessig, a passionate deconstructor of copyright protections called copyright the grandest “either/or” confusion. If copyright and patents is property, Lessig says, how can it be contrary to allow property right holders to release their right to hold it? Fighting against copyright means fighting against the knee jerk reaction of knee jerkers as being “anti-capitalists.” Free software movement has taught us to ask what the societal benefits are of asking the question of what happens when we free content.

Copyright is already at the center of the 2008 political debate through free video dissemination. Rip, mix, and burn is now central to the political process. This has always been what politics has been about – using new tools to empower new speakers. The consequences of using the new tools is that it continues the process of democratizing the political process. It creates the promise of radical participation in the political process. Lessig reminds us that the dynamic is that regardless of copyright status, people are going to do as they wish with content. Proprietary networks exercise control over free speech. “Free debates not possible in proprietary networks, then we shouldn’t have free networks carry free debates.” We should start from a relationship that starts with principles of democratic free speech that cannot happen within proprietary networks. Principle over proprietary information, he says. Insane idea that proprietary content,, exclusive control, that runs Hollywood, should extend everywhere.

So, what do we do? We have to make sure copyright makes sense where it works, and doesn’t restrict content where it doesn’t work. Democrats need to speak loud and clear about what the future of copyright is, he says, with a huge picture of Hillary staring out at us. An economy of influence exists in the political system, which ensures that the only views heard go hand-in-hand with campaign financing. We need to fight extremism because this is a bipartisan issue about freedom. He closed with this statement, “When sanity overwhelms the politics of influence than there is a place called “Hope”.

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