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<font size=2><b>Lucasfilm's Phantom Menace<br><br>
</b>By Lawrence Lessig<br>
Thursday, July 12, 2007; A23<br><br>
<br>
In May,</font><a href="??.htm"><font size=2 color="#0000FF">
Lucasfilm</a></font><font size=2> announced plans to enable fans of the
"Star Wars" series to "remix" "Star Wars"
video clips with their own creative work. Using an innovative Internet
platform called Eyespot, these (re)creators can select video clips or
other content and then add images or upload new content, whether images,
video or music.<br><br>
Eyespot is one of many new technologies inviting "users" to do
more than use the creativity they are consuming. Likewise, Lucasfilm is
one of many companies recognizing that the more "users" use
their creativity, the thicker the bonds are between consumers and the
work consumed. (Put differently, the more money Lucasfilm can make.)
Turning consumers into creators is the latest fad among companies
scrambling for new profits in the digital age. How better to revive a
30-year-old series than by enlisting armies of kids to make the content
interesting again? These traditionally protective commercial entities are
creating "hybrids" -- leveraging free labor to make their
commercial properties more valuable.<br><br>
Among companies enabling this remix creativity, Eyespot is one of the
more enlightened. Remixers using Eyespot's technology typically own what
they produce. Eyespot allows them to share their work on or off its
platform. No one's getting paid (yet) for the creativity that Eyespot
enables. (Other companies, such as Revver, are experimenting with ways to
get creators paid.) And Eyespot at least explicitly grants to creators
the right to their own creativity.<br><br>
A dark force, however, has influenced Lucasfilm's adoption of Eyespot's
technology. A careful reading of Lucasfilm's terms of use show that in
exchange for the right to remix Lucasfilm's creativity, the remixer has
to give up all rights to what he produces. In particular, the remixer
grants to Lucasfilm the "exclusive right" to the remix --
including any commercial rights -- for free. To any content the remixer
uploads to the site, he grants to Lucasfilm a perpetual non-exclusive
right, again including commercial rights and again for free.<br><br>
Upload a remix and</font><a href="??.htm"><font size=2 color="#0000FF">
George Lucas</a></font><font size=2>, and only Lucas, is free to include
it on his Web site or in his next movie, with no compensation to the
creator. You are not even permitted to post it
on</font><a href="??.htm"><font size=2 color="#0000FF">
YouTube</a></font><font size=2>. Upload a particularly good image as part
of your remix, and Lucas is free to use it commercially with no
compensation to the creator. The remixer is allowed to work, but the
product of his work is not his. Put in terms appropriately
(for</font><a href="??.htm"><font size=2 color="#0000FF">
Hollywood</a></font><font size=2>) over the top: The remixer becomes the
sharecropper of the digital age.<br><br>
Lucas is of course free, subject to "fair use," to do whatever
he wants with his creative work. The law of copyright grants him an
exclusive right to "derivatives"; a remix is plainly a
derivative. And it's true that no one is forcing anyone to make a remix
for free.<br><br>
Yet as anyone watching this industry knows, there is a deep divide
between those who believe that obsessive control is the hybrid's path to
profit and those who believe that freer access will build stronger, more
profitable ties. Predictably, on the Vader-side of control is often a
gaggle of lawyers who continue to act as though nothing interesting has
changed in copyright law since the time
of</font><a href="??.htm"><font size=2 color="#0000FF"> John Philip
Sousa</a></font><font size=2>. These lawyers counsel their clients that
control is always better. They ridicule efforts to strike a different
balance with the army of creators being called into the service of their
clients. It is for the privilege of getting to remix a 30-year-old series
that these new creators are told they must waive any rights of their own.
They should be happy with whatever they get (especially as most of them
are probably "pirates" anyway).<br><br>
Lawyers never face an opening weekend. Like law professors, their advice
lives largely protected from the market. They justify what they do in
terms of "right and wrong," while everyone else has to justify
their work in terms of profit. They move slowly, and deliberately. If you
listen carefully, sometimes you can even hear them breathe.<br><br>
A decade from now, this Vaderesque advice will look as silly as the
advice lawyers gave the recording industry a decade ago. New entrants,
not as obsessed with total control, will generate radically more
successful remix markets. The people who spend hundreds of hours creating
this new work will flock to places and companies where their integrity as
creators is respected. As every revolution in democratizing technologies
since the beginning of time has demonstrated, victory goes to those who
embrace with respect the new creators.<br><br>
Hybrids are an important future of Internet growth. Businesses will have
to think carefully about which terms will excite the masses to work for
them for free. Competition will help define these terms. But if one more
lawyer protected from the market may be permitted a prediction, I suggest
sharecropping will not survive long as a successful strategy for the
remixer.<br><br>
Feel the force, counselors.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071101996_pf.html">
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071101996_pf.html</a>
<br><br>
<br><br>
</font>===========================<br>
<font size=2>Brad Seawell, Program Coordinator<br>
MIT Communications Forum<br>
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum" eudora="autourl">
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum<br>
</a>14N-430<br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139<br>
voice 617-253-3521<br>
fax 617-253-6105 <br><br>
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