MediaVidea

Lawrence Lessig’s Plan B to save the world

Lawrence Lessig, who founded Creative Commons, who played a special role in the Microsoft anti-trust case and who also wrote “Code”, has decided after 10 years of dogged activism, that the cause for public domain, net neutrality and limited copyright terms can be served better when you strike at the roots of it all – namely, government corruption – money from big corporations going to politicians just so that the lawmakers keep churning up insane, suffocating laws that hinder public good and creativity.

The DMCA, formulated during Bill Clinton’s president ship in 1998 is a shining example of such a law.

Recognizing that the fundamentals of modern government machinery are themselves rotten, appropriately, Mr. Lessig has decided to shift the focus of his activism towards corruption and how it influences legislation - big money, lobbying, buying people, election funding - go figure.

Not surprisingly, Google has decided to follow Microsoft’s example and is busy building a lobbying engine in Washington. One obvious reason is the raising concern for privacy issues. The Search giant stores an astonishing amount of users’ data and no one is feeling any comfortable with this.

The nexus between governments and big corporations promises to suffocate manifold in digital universe inhabited in most parts by libertarian people.

Who knows? The worst of laws have yet to come.

Labels: DMCA, online rights, privacy issues, trends

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:57 PM