THE PENGUIN PRESS
NEW YORK
2004
FREE CULTURE
HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE
LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE AND CONTROL
CREATIVITY
LAWRENCE LESSIG
HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND
THE LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE
AND CONTROL CREATIVITY
THE PENGUIN PRESS
a member of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2004
All rights reserved
Excerpt from an editorial titled "The Coming of Copyright Perpetuity,"
The New York Times, January 16, 2003. Copyright © 2003 by The New York Times Co.
Reprinted with permission.
Cartoon by Paul Conrad on page 159. Copyright Tribune Media Services, Inc.
All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Diagram on page 164 courtesy of the office of FCC Commissioner, Michael J. Copps.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lessig, Lawrence.
Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law to lock down
culture and control creativity / Lawrence Lessig.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-59420-006-8 (hardcover)
1. Intellectual property-United States. 2. Mass media-United States.
3.Technological innovations-United States. 4. Art-United States. I.Title.
KF2979.L47 2004
343.7309'9-dc22 2003063276
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Designed by Marysarah Quinn
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the
prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other
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only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic
piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
To Eric Eldred-whose work first drew me
to this cause, and for whom
it continues still.
CONTENTS
PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION 1
"PIRACY" 15
CHAPTER ONE: Creators 21
CHAPTER TWO: "Mere Copyists" 31
CHAPTER THREE: Catalogs 48
CHAPTER FOUR: "Pirates" 53
Film 53
Recorded Music 55
Radio 58
Cable TV 59
CHAPTER FIVE: "Piracy" 62
Piracy I 63
Piracy II 66
(to navigate this PDF,
use the bookmark bar)
<http://free-culture.org/get-it>
"PROPERTY" 81
CHAPTER SIX: Founders 85
CHAPTER SEVEN: Recorders 95
CHAPTER EIGHT: Transformers 100
CHAPTER NINE: Collectors 108
CHAPTER TEN: "Property" 116
Why Hollywood Is Right 124
Beginnings 130
Law: Duration 133
Law: Scope 136
Law and Architecture: Reach 139
Architecture and Law: Force 147
Market: Concentration 161
Together 168
PUZZLES 175
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Chimera 177
CHAPTER TWELVE: Harms 183
Constraining Creators 184
Constraining Innovators 188
Corrupting Citizens 199
BALANCES 209
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Eldred 213
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Eldred II 248
CONCLUSION 257
AFTERWORD 273
Us, Now 276
Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed:
Examples 277
Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea 282
Them, Soon 287
1. More Formalities 287
Registration and Renewal 289
Marking 290
2. Shorter Terms 292
3. Free Use Vs. Fair Use 294
4. Liberate the Music-Again 296
5. Fire Lots of Lawyers 304
NOTES 307
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 331
INDEX 333
PREFACE
At the end of his review of my first book, Code: And Other Laws of
Cyberspace, David Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless
technical and computer-related texts, wrote this:
Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It
doesn't affect people who aren't online (and only a tiny minority
of the world population is). And if you don't like the Internet's
system, you can always flip off the modem.1
Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book-that software,
or "code," functioned as a kind of law-and his review suggested
the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could always
"drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome"-like simply flip a switch and be back
home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any troubles
that exist in that space wouldn't "affect" us anymore.
Pogue might have been right in 1999-I'm skeptical, but maybe.
But even if he was right then, the point is not right now: Free Culture
is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the modem is turned