Forbes writer Stephen Manes isn’t impressed with Larry Lessig’s new book:
The intellectual property issue of our time is how to balance the rights of creators and consumers.
Don’t look to Lessig for that balance. First he reasonably extols “‘Walt Disney creativity’–a form of expression and genius that builds upon the culture around us and makes it something different.” But then, in a rhetorical bait-and-switch, he spends most of the book making the case that a free pass should be given to the specific kind of “creativity” that directly reuses existing work, up to and including wholesale sampling and so-called sharing.
That’s nuts.
Link via Lessig’s blog.
and Lessig has an excellent reply to Manes, which prolly wished he had finished reading the book before reviewing it:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001794.shtml#001794
I think Manes’ comments on Lessig’s book are reasonable and accurate. Lessig has a history of claiming to support “reasonable” copyright laws in the abstract, and then undermining this position with detailed recommendations to the contrary. For example, Lessig wants to strip copyright holders of the means to protect their intellectual property rights on the Internet, which has the same effect as eliminating these rights altogether.
You can’t call Manes’ comments as accurate, reasonable, or anything else, because you haven’t read the book. (unless of course, you got an advance copy of it as well)
To say that Lessig “wants to strip copyright holders of the means to protect their intellectual property rights on the Internet” is 100% false, or at the very least reveals that you missed a very large point of his last book. Lessig is not at all in favor of taking any rights away from any content creators, *especially* on the Internet.
He is surely not anti-IP and anti-copyright, and I think you’re aware of that.