Transcript of SFP#6 about regulation with Professor Lawrence Lessig
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WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:17.960 Welcome to the fifth episode of the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:17.960 --> 00:21.320 This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:21.320 --> 00:25.120 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology. 00:25.120 --> 00:26.120 I'm Matthias Kirschner. 00:26.120 --> 00:28.680 I'm the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:28.720 --> 00:31.200 I'm doing this podcast today with Katarina Nokun. 00:31.200 --> 00:32.040 Hello. 00:32.040 --> 00:34.880 We are very happy to welcome today Lauren Slasik. 00:34.880 --> 00:37.200 He's the inventor of creative comments 00:37.200 --> 00:41.080 and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 00:41.080 --> 00:44.080 He was also on the board of our sister organization 00:44.080 --> 00:46.200 with the Free Software Foundation. 00:46.200 --> 00:48.680 And he just recently published a new book. 00:48.680 --> 00:52.040 They don't represent us, we're claiming our democracy. 00:52.040 --> 00:56.520 And he's the author of the book Code and Adder Laws of Cyberspace from 1999, 00:56.520 --> 00:59.080 which was for myself the most influential book 00:59.080 --> 01:01.200 for my thinking about software freedom. 01:01.200 --> 01:03.120 Nice to have you in our podcast. 01:03.120 --> 01:05.920 We are very happy to have friends to get a slot with you. 01:05.920 --> 01:07.480 And we are huge fans. 01:07.480 --> 01:08.960 We read your books. 01:08.960 --> 01:13.680 And when we prepare for the podcast or when we prepare for the question, 01:13.680 --> 01:16.880 I ask myself all those specific moments in your life 01:16.880 --> 01:22.880 when you realize that software freedom is important to you. 01:22.880 --> 01:28.360 Well, I don't pretend that I had this insight 01:28.360 --> 01:31.920 before hearing Richard Stallman talk. 01:31.920 --> 01:36.520 And so Richard Stallman, when I don't remember exactly whether it was 01:36.520 --> 01:38.120 I had read something and then saw him speak 01:38.120 --> 01:39.760 or it saw him speak and then read something. 01:39.760 --> 01:42.640 But the point is that was the experience 01:42.640 --> 01:47.240 that forced me to begin to think about the character 01:47.240 --> 01:50.560 of the infrastructure of this social world 01:50.560 --> 01:54.280 that was being constructed by technology. 01:54.280 --> 01:58.080 And so that was the cause, that was the trigger. 01:58.080 --> 02:00.640 And that then led me to think about a lot of things 02:00.640 --> 02:04.800 which produced that book and then a bunch of stuff afterwards. 02:04.800 --> 02:08.640 In this book which is Code and Adder Laws of Cyberspace, 02:08.640 --> 02:12.720 you explain how individuals are regulated by different mechanisms. 02:12.720 --> 02:18.320 Though you separate between the market, social norms, law and architecture, 02:18.320 --> 02:21.760 can you briefly explain how these kinds of regulation 02:21.760 --> 02:25.240 differ from one another and how they affect us in our daily life? 02:25.240 --> 02:27.680 Right, so the law is the one that's most intuitive. 02:27.680 --> 02:32.120 If you have a sense that it says if you speed, you will be penalized 02:32.120 --> 02:35.840 or if you commit murder, you will be sent to jail. 02:35.840 --> 02:40.920 So this is an ex-post punishment, punishment after the fact, 02:40.920 --> 02:43.200 imposed by the state. 02:43.200 --> 02:45.720 But you can distinguish that from norms. 02:45.760 --> 02:51.200 So if you're in a society that's governed by significant norms, 02:51.200 --> 02:54.520 the norms also are subject to punishment. 02:54.520 --> 02:58.040 If you violate the norms, but their punishment comes from the community, 02:58.040 --> 02:59.160 it doesn't come from the state. 02:59.160 --> 03:02.600 So it's decentralized enforcement of that rule. 03:02.600 --> 03:05.320 So both of them are rules, but ones can force by the state, 03:05.320 --> 03:07.400 ones in force by our community. 03:07.400 --> 03:11.320 The market, of course, which itself is constructed by law and norms, 03:11.320 --> 03:13.640 I don't mean to say that they're not intermixed, 03:13.640 --> 03:18.200 but the market sets the conditions on you having access to certain things. 03:18.200 --> 03:20.960 So if I sing, you'll pay me a certain amount. 03:20.960 --> 03:23.120 If I sing less, you'll pay me more, right? 03:23.120 --> 03:25.280 Because if I sing, it's just like that. 03:25.280 --> 03:29.200 But the point is there's a conditionality, which is the price, 03:29.200 --> 03:31.360 and that's the way the market regulates. 03:31.360 --> 03:35.760 And then the one that's most important in thinking about the internet 03:35.760 --> 03:39.440 is the way that architecture can regulate. 03:39.440 --> 03:43.320 So in real space, we understand that whenever you go over a speed bump, 03:43.320 --> 03:45.560 speed bump is trying to force you to slow down. 03:45.560 --> 03:50.880 It's using the physics of automobiles and roads to do that. 03:50.880 --> 03:54.240 Lecture halls don't typically have beautiful windows 03:54.240 --> 03:56.440 that you can look at and see what's going on the outside, 03:56.440 --> 04:00.280 because professor wants you to be focused on the professor. 04:00.280 --> 04:03.120 Those are uses of architecture in real space, 04:03.120 --> 04:06.840 but when you think about that and you see the way the net is, 04:06.840 --> 04:11.800 you can begin to recognize that the net is architected, too. 04:11.800 --> 04:14.520 It's architected to enable certain things, 04:14.520 --> 04:15.880 and to disable certain things. 04:15.880 --> 04:18.840 And when the internet was first architected, 04:18.840 --> 04:21.160 it was architected to enable innovation. 04:21.160 --> 04:22.920 It was architected to enable privacy. 04:22.920 --> 04:25.720 It was architected to enable free speech. 04:25.720 --> 04:29.400 And the creativity that would create. 04:29.400 --> 04:31.760 And the point of my book code was to say, 04:31.760 --> 04:36.080 all of those characteristics were contingent. 04:36.080 --> 04:38.600 We can imagine the internet being architected 04:38.600 --> 04:41.400 to take away the opportunity to innovate, 04:41.400 --> 04:44.600 to take away privacy, to take away the capacity 04:44.600 --> 04:47.120 to engage in free speech, take away the opportunity 04:47.120 --> 04:49.680 for creativity on top. 04:49.680 --> 04:52.040 When I wrote that, people said, oh, no, no, no. 04:52.040 --> 04:54.200 You're misunderstanding it's the nature of the net. 04:54.200 --> 04:56.280 It has to protect these things. 04:56.280 --> 04:58.360 And my point was there's no nature here. 04:58.360 --> 04:59.360 It's just built. 04:59.360 --> 05:00.720 It could be built differently. 05:00.720 --> 05:02.800 And the governments in business have an incentive 05:02.800 --> 05:04.400 to build it differently. 05:04.400 --> 05:06.960 Governments in business want a world 05:06.960 --> 05:11.120 where innovation can be controlled in favor of the incumbents. 05:11.120 --> 05:13.040 Where privacy is gone, because we 05:13.040 --> 05:15.840 surveil you in no exactly what you think and care about. 05:15.840 --> 05:19.160 So we can sell things to you or punish you. 05:19.160 --> 05:22.240 Where speech is conditional, like your freedom to speak, 05:22.240 --> 05:24.520 can be punished based on what you say. 05:24.520 --> 05:26.600 And where creativity is regulated 05:26.600 --> 05:30.320 to control by the creator, maybe the copyright holders 05:30.320 --> 05:31.440 and the like. 05:31.440 --> 05:34.040 So that was the point of the recognition 05:34.040 --> 05:35.440 of the way architecture regulates. 05:35.440 --> 05:37.880 But the general point, which we continue 05:37.880 --> 05:40.040 to use outside of the study of cyber law, 05:40.040 --> 05:42.480 the general point about how they interact 05:42.480 --> 05:43.600 is the important point here. 05:43.600 --> 05:47.840 So you want to regulate smoking, which I want to regulate, 05:47.840 --> 05:49.760 because I think it's a terrible, terrible thing. 05:49.760 --> 05:52.240 You know, the law could forbid people 05:52.240 --> 05:53.960 under the age of 18 from smoking 05:53.960 --> 05:57.240 and in most many places in the states it does. 05:57.240 --> 05:59.440 The law could try to stigmatize smokers. 05:59.440 --> 06:01.880 California had an extraordinary campaign 06:01.880 --> 06:04.280 where they tried to make smokers seem like weak people, 06:04.280 --> 06:05.520 like pathetic people. 06:05.520 --> 06:08.680 So it was like rallying norms against smokers. 06:08.680 --> 06:10.520 You can use the market to regulate smoking. 06:10.520 --> 06:12.040 You can tax cigarettes. 06:12.040 --> 06:14.320 Of course, we tax cigarettes and we subsidize tobacco 06:14.320 --> 06:15.160 in the United States. 06:15.160 --> 06:16.720 It's a little confused, but the point is, 06:16.720 --> 06:19.600 you can make it so the price makes it harder to smoke. 06:19.600 --> 06:21.720 And you can regulate the architecture of cigarettes. 06:21.720 --> 06:24.240 The FDA for a while was considering 06:24.240 --> 06:27.400 deeming cigarettes nicotine delivery devices 06:27.400 --> 06:29.680 so that they would be drugs so that they could regulate 06:29.680 --> 06:31.600 the quantity of nicotine that was in a cigarette. 06:31.600 --> 06:33.320 And if you could lower the nicotine, 06:33.320 --> 06:35.480 you would lower the addictiveness of the cigarettes. 06:35.480 --> 06:37.520 The point is, regulators kind of think of those things 06:37.520 --> 06:38.560 together. 06:38.560 --> 06:40.640 And always get it to say, what's the right mix? 06:40.640 --> 06:42.440 Like, should I use architecture? 06:42.440 --> 06:43.440 Should I use law? 06:43.440 --> 06:44.720 Should I use norms? 06:44.720 --> 06:47.360 Or how do I bring them all together? 06:47.360 --> 06:49.800 Do you have other examples of how government 06:49.800 --> 06:52.040 are regulating with architecture? 06:52.040 --> 06:55.520 I mean, if software or other architecture as well? 06:55.520 --> 06:57.280 Well, sure. 06:57.280 --> 07:00.080 In real space, there are great regulations 07:00.080 --> 07:01.640 the government makes about architecture. 07:01.640 --> 07:04.240 For example, the physically disabled 07:04.240 --> 07:07.200 have enormous freedom now relative to what they had 07:07.200 --> 07:09.720 50 years ago, because governments have regulated 07:09.720 --> 07:11.480 literally architecture of buildings to say, 07:11.480 --> 07:13.440 you can't build a building unless you have ramps 07:13.440 --> 07:16.920 or you have access for people who are in wheelchairs. 07:16.920 --> 07:21.240 Or you build it so that ATM so that blind people can use the ATM. 07:21.240 --> 07:24.640 So those are specific regulations directed at that. 07:24.640 --> 07:28.520 And the internet context, we're seeing all sorts of eagerness 07:28.520 --> 07:31.520 to regulate in the context of the emergence of blockchain 07:31.520 --> 07:33.760 technology, because there's a fear of governments 07:33.760 --> 07:37.400 that's the opportunity of a generalized 07:37.400 --> 07:40.320 like Ethereum-like blockchain technology 07:40.320 --> 07:43.120 could begin to displace a lot of a sovereignty 07:43.120 --> 07:45.520 or sovereign power of governments. 07:45.520 --> 07:50.000 And in the context of the war on, quote, war on terror, 07:50.000 --> 07:53.280 there's significant evidence that the government explicitly 07:53.280 --> 07:57.240 required technology companies to build technical backdoors 07:57.240 --> 08:01.640 into their security technologies 08:01.640 --> 08:04.400 to enable the government to get in, in case there were 08:04.400 --> 08:05.960 some reason the government had to be in. 08:05.960 --> 08:08.240 Now, of course, what that did was render 08:08.240 --> 08:11.200 most of these technologies vulnerable to Chinese hackers. 08:11.200 --> 08:13.840 So businesses in the United States who believe 08:13.840 --> 08:15.960 they bought, quote, security software 08:15.960 --> 08:18.080 have found that they've bought insecurity software 08:18.080 --> 08:20.920 because it's been architected to be insecure. 08:20.920 --> 08:23.360 But those are imperfect examples. 08:23.360 --> 08:25.920 The methodology, though, I think is certainly what we think 08:25.920 --> 08:28.960 is the future of regulation. 08:28.960 --> 08:32.440 As a user, I often don't know what a certain software 08:32.440 --> 08:35.280 exactly does on my computer because the code itself 08:35.280 --> 08:37.520 is regarded as a business secret. 08:37.520 --> 08:40.560 Do you think that a such a generous structure 08:40.560 --> 08:43.760 of how software is built in our society 08:43.760 --> 08:47.400 and how it is protected by copyright and patents 08:47.400 --> 08:50.400 also affects the general distribution of power 08:50.400 --> 08:52.320 in a digitalized society? 08:52.320 --> 08:53.920 Absolutely. 08:53.920 --> 08:56.680 So the most obvious troubling example of this 08:56.680 --> 09:01.320 is, for example, California is contracting out 09:01.320 --> 09:05.440 with technology companies for AI technologies 09:05.440 --> 09:07.840 to help decide whether somebody should stay in prison 09:07.840 --> 09:09.480 or somebody should get parole. 09:09.480 --> 09:12.280 These algorithms look at a billion different things 09:12.280 --> 09:15.400 and then you decide you should get out and you should not. 09:15.400 --> 09:18.840 When civil rights, civil liberties advocates 09:18.840 --> 09:21.160 have said, what's the algorithm? 09:21.160 --> 09:22.920 How's the algorithm making that decision? 09:22.920 --> 09:24.280 Like, what are the factors? 09:24.280 --> 09:25.960 The companies have said, we're not going to tell you. 09:25.960 --> 09:28.320 It's a trade secret. 09:28.320 --> 09:32.920 And astonishingly, so far there's no strong position 09:32.920 --> 09:35.680 from the government or from the courts to say, you can't do that. 09:35.680 --> 09:38.480 You can't regulate with secret rules. 09:38.480 --> 09:40.680 Yet that's effectively what they're doing. 09:40.680 --> 09:44.400 So I'm not sure I would go so far as saying 09:44.400 --> 09:48.080 that you should not permit proprietary software. 09:48.080 --> 09:49.680 I certainly support free software, 09:49.680 --> 09:52.320 but I'm not sure we should ban proprietary software. 09:52.320 --> 09:55.720 But I would say that if there is software 09:55.760 --> 09:58.720 that is effectively regulating, especially 09:58.720 --> 10:01.200 through the government, we need to have a way 10:01.200 --> 10:03.280 to understand how it's regulating. 10:03.280 --> 10:08.360 And so whether that's building sophisticated auditing 10:08.360 --> 10:10.920 structures like we have financial auditing, 10:10.920 --> 10:14.600 you can imagine technology audits that have a capacity 10:14.600 --> 10:18.280 for evaluating what's going on or requiring source code 10:18.280 --> 10:19.240 to be revealed to somebody. 10:19.240 --> 10:22.240 I don't know exactly how to do it, but I do know the principle. 10:22.240 --> 10:25.680 There can't be regulation of people in a free society 10:25.680 --> 10:28.360 that can't justify itself. 10:28.360 --> 10:31.680 And proprietary software that is being used to determine 10:31.680 --> 10:34.560 whether you get out of jail or not is regulating us 10:34.560 --> 10:36.960 without justifying itself, and that can't be allowed. 10:36.960 --> 10:41.200 I mean, this example of our judges in some US states 10:41.200 --> 10:43.400 make decisions as Emmy for us Europeans 10:43.400 --> 10:45.880 is very clear that you should forbid such a thing 10:45.880 --> 10:49.120 or even you should not allow to do such things. 10:49.120 --> 10:53.160 But do you think it makes also a general difference of code 10:53.160 --> 10:55.360 that is used by government institutions 10:55.360 --> 10:59.520 is proprietary or free software in other contexts? 10:59.520 --> 11:03.640 So I think it's stupid for governments 11:03.640 --> 11:07.440 to deploy proprietary code in most important governmental 11:07.440 --> 11:08.400 function contexts. 11:08.400 --> 11:11.560 And the reason for that is most of the functions 11:11.560 --> 11:13.200 that governments perform around the world 11:13.200 --> 11:15.400 are pretty redundant. 11:15.400 --> 11:18.160 I mean, you've got welfare systems in every major country. 11:18.160 --> 11:20.760 They all figure out who's entitled to a welfare who's not. 11:20.760 --> 11:21.560 How do you distribute it? 11:21.560 --> 11:23.320 You have social security systems. 11:23.320 --> 11:27.080 You have systems for checking imports, whatever. 11:27.080 --> 11:29.680 It would be much better to be in a world 11:29.680 --> 11:34.080 where you opted into the free software of those systems 11:34.080 --> 11:37.720 and could build and add to the free software of those systems. 11:37.720 --> 11:42.720 So that the advantages that are embedded in any place 11:43.240 --> 11:45.840 that this is being deployed get shared everywhere. 11:45.840 --> 11:48.280 That would be an ecology that would be 11:48.280 --> 11:51.240 in the long run better, more robust and cheaper. 11:51.240 --> 11:55.720 The problem is that too many government policy makers 11:55.720 --> 11:59.240 don't have any clue about the underlying technologies. 11:59.240 --> 12:03.840 And it always is the, we used to say, 30 years ago, 12:03.840 --> 12:07.480 the simplest decision was to choose IBM. 12:07.480 --> 12:10.200 The simplest decision today is to choose Microsoft. 12:10.200 --> 12:12.840 Like who could disagree with choosing Microsoft? 12:12.840 --> 12:16.000 But obviously, there are so many advantages 12:16.000 --> 12:18.040 to beginning to move in a direction 12:18.040 --> 12:21.240 that is enabling more competition 12:21.240 --> 12:24.920 and free software is obviously one of those dimensions. 12:24.920 --> 12:26.680 When I argue for software freedom, 12:26.680 --> 12:29.640 some people sometimes say, we don't need more regulation 12:29.640 --> 12:32.320 because I think it's, I'm talking about regulating 12:32.320 --> 12:33.160 in this aspect. 12:33.160 --> 12:34.840 And I think it's a strange aspect 12:34.840 --> 12:37.400 because there are already lots of regulation 12:37.400 --> 12:39.160 in favor of proprietary software 12:39.160 --> 12:42.240 like governments often support keeping the workings 12:42.240 --> 12:45.120 of software secret by forbidding to analyze 12:45.120 --> 12:47.440 how it works in publishing results. 12:47.440 --> 12:51.440 They grant monopolies on long copyright terms on software 12:51.440 --> 12:53.760 and they allow software to be patented. 12:53.760 --> 12:56.200 Do you think that we have too much 12:56.200 --> 12:58.320 or just a wrong kind of regulation in place 12:58.320 --> 13:00.200 when it comes to software? 13:00.200 --> 13:03.160 Well, I certainly think that in the context of copyright, 13:03.160 --> 13:05.800 which is what I know in this field 13:05.800 --> 13:07.480 of so-called intellectual property, 13:07.480 --> 13:09.640 obviously Richard Solomon would be very upset 13:09.640 --> 13:11.920 with that word, but in that field, 13:11.920 --> 13:13.320 I know a lot about copyright. 13:13.320 --> 13:17.240 It's certainly the case that copyright is a regulation 13:17.240 --> 13:21.000 that is wildly more punitive and expansive 13:21.000 --> 13:24.840 than it needs to be to achieve its own objectives. 13:24.840 --> 13:27.320 The copyright term now is life of the author 13:27.320 --> 13:29.600 plus 70 years in the United States 13:29.600 --> 13:32.480 for 95 years for corporate works. 13:32.480 --> 13:35.760 There is no corporation that decides whether or not 13:35.760 --> 13:39.280 to invest in a project based on getting a return 13:39.280 --> 13:40.880 for 95 years. 13:40.880 --> 13:42.000 Nobody does that. 13:42.000 --> 13:44.480 And even worse is where you have countries 13:44.520 --> 13:47.440 which basically Europe just went through this craziness, 13:47.440 --> 13:50.760 extending the term for existing copyrights. 13:50.760 --> 13:53.440 If the purpose of a copyright is to create an incentive 13:53.440 --> 13:57.960 to produce something, not even the EU parliament 13:57.960 --> 14:01.120 can create the incentive to do something in the past. 14:01.120 --> 14:03.600 So no matter what, George Gershwin 14:03.600 --> 14:05.080 is not going to produce anything more. 14:05.080 --> 14:06.840 So there's no reason to extend the copyrights 14:06.840 --> 14:08.720 from the 1920s and 1930s. 14:08.720 --> 14:11.880 Yet this seems like an automatic thing to policy makers 14:11.880 --> 14:14.560 because again, they have this image that property is good 14:14.560 --> 14:16.600 and more property is better. 14:16.600 --> 14:18.520 That is wrong in a thousand ways 14:18.520 --> 14:21.760 when we talk about the regulation of called copyright. 14:21.760 --> 14:27.000 And I think a good dose of libertarian anti-government instinct 14:27.000 --> 14:28.840 would do a lot of good here, right? 14:28.840 --> 14:30.480 So if you want to be anti, you know, 14:30.480 --> 14:33.320 this is where, you know, I'm not a libertarian, 14:33.320 --> 14:36.240 but I find a lot of allies who are libertarians 14:36.240 --> 14:39.440 anti-government types about copyright regulation 14:39.440 --> 14:40.600 because they can see. 14:40.600 --> 14:43.400 It's just basically crony capitalists 14:43.400 --> 14:46.120 capturing a corrupted political process 14:46.120 --> 14:48.320 to leverage their power into protecting 14:48.320 --> 14:51.520 their own against future competitors. 14:51.520 --> 14:55.320 And even beyond competition, 14:55.320 --> 14:57.480 they're protecting against criticism 14:57.480 --> 15:01.400 or use of their work in ways that they don't like the speech 15:01.400 --> 15:03.080 component as it relates to them. 15:03.080 --> 15:05.800 And I just, you know, can't begin to see 15:05.800 --> 15:07.560 what the justification for that is yet 15:07.560 --> 15:10.360 we still have governments that do it again and again. 15:11.360 --> 15:12.560 In your recent work, 15:12.560 --> 15:16.760 you often address the problem of lobbying and corruption. 15:16.760 --> 15:19.440 And would you say that without the lobbying efforts 15:19.440 --> 15:22.880 of companies such as Disney, me, today might have 15:22.880 --> 15:26.440 a totally different copyright regime as we have now? 15:26.440 --> 15:27.440 Of course we would. 15:27.440 --> 15:30.120 And the evidence for that is that, you know, 15:30.120 --> 15:31.920 until there was the heavy lobbying 15:31.920 --> 15:34.040 in the United States around copyright extension 15:34.320 --> 15:37.640 in the mid-1970s, the general view, 15:37.640 --> 15:39.680 the general length of copyright and the general view 15:39.680 --> 15:41.560 about copyright was very balanced. 15:41.560 --> 15:44.960 It was not, there was no extremists like you have today. 15:44.960 --> 15:49.040 And the extremism was built by this incredibly powerful 15:49.040 --> 15:52.520 industry which spent an enormous amount of money 15:52.520 --> 15:55.200 basically buying off members of Congress, 15:55.200 --> 15:58.720 not in a crude corrupt way, nobody bribes anybody. 15:58.720 --> 16:00.400 But just by creating this atmosphere 16:00.400 --> 16:03.600 where it just seems obvious that you would support 16:03.680 --> 16:06.560 massive protections called copyright. 16:06.560 --> 16:09.120 And I think that, you know, what we have to do 16:09.120 --> 16:12.240 is to build obviousness in the other way 16:12.240 --> 16:16.720 and force them to justify their regulations on my speech. 16:16.720 --> 16:19.280 You begin to see this back and forth 16:19.280 --> 16:21.960 developing in a productive way around YouTube. 16:21.960 --> 16:25.800 So for example, you know, YouTube develops 16:25.800 --> 16:29.840 and the copyright extremists are angry at YouTube 16:29.840 --> 16:31.760 because there's so many copyright violations 16:31.760 --> 16:33.600 they say going on on YouTube. 16:33.600 --> 16:37.000 So YouTube and Google developed this technology content ID 16:37.000 --> 16:40.320 that is basically able to take fingerprints of 16:40.320 --> 16:44.520 copyrighted music and then compare it to any content 16:44.520 --> 16:45.800 that's uploaded on YouTube. 16:45.800 --> 16:48.400 And then give a notice to the person who uploads 16:48.400 --> 16:50.640 the copyrighted content that, you know, 16:50.640 --> 16:52.320 we're gonna take your stuff down 16:52.320 --> 16:53.760 or we're gonna monetize your stuff 16:53.760 --> 16:55.360 because you violate the copyrights. 16:55.360 --> 16:59.600 Okay, so, you know, I've had many fights 16:59.600 --> 17:01.680 where I will upload a lecture, 17:01.680 --> 17:04.320 where in the middle of a lecture I will do a demonstration 17:04.320 --> 17:06.520 of like some point I'm making about copyright 17:06.520 --> 17:08.160 and I will use a snippet of a song 17:08.160 --> 17:11.320 and that snippet will be caught by content ID 17:11.320 --> 17:13.120 and they'll say we're gonna take your lecture down. 17:13.120 --> 17:15.120 It happens in Germany all the time. 17:15.120 --> 17:19.120 Germany is the most extreme, outrageous black box copyright. 17:20.400 --> 17:22.520 I can't use the word fascist in Germany 17:22.520 --> 17:24.360 but, you know, the point is that's what we would call it 17:24.360 --> 17:25.880 in the United States. 17:25.880 --> 17:27.240 But it happens in Germany all the time 17:27.240 --> 17:30.200 and it seems natural to them, that's the way it should be. 17:30.200 --> 17:31.920 Now, for me, you know, it doesn't matter 17:31.920 --> 17:35.040 because my livelihood does not depend on YouTube. 17:35.040 --> 17:37.240 I don't get money for my stuff being put up there 17:37.240 --> 17:39.640 and run ads against my stuff, so that's fine. 17:39.640 --> 17:42.480 But there are these creators who are building YouTube channels. 17:42.480 --> 17:44.440 There was a really great one recently 17:44.440 --> 17:47.280 where this guy who basically teaches guitar lessons 17:47.280 --> 17:50.560 on using YouTube and he'll do these demonstrations 17:50.560 --> 17:53.560 of techniques and, you know, he's very careful 17:53.560 --> 17:57.240 not to copy songs, but he'll do like four or five bars 17:57.240 --> 17:58.520 to show a certain technique. 17:58.520 --> 18:01.680 And those four or five bars will then be attributed 18:01.680 --> 18:04.120 to some copyright owner and then he's informed 18:04.120 --> 18:06.960 that all of the advertising rammative from his videos 18:06.960 --> 18:10.000 will be given to the collective who then just, 18:10.000 --> 18:12.760 and of course, that means as he can't produce, 18:12.760 --> 18:16.160 he can't be a creator and what good is coming from this? 18:16.160 --> 18:17.520 I mean, it's not even copying. 18:17.520 --> 18:19.240 He's not even saying, here's the Beatles. 18:19.240 --> 18:20.640 Let me tell you how the Beatles play. 18:20.640 --> 18:23.880 It's, here's an opening of blah, blah, blah that, you know, 18:23.880 --> 18:26.960 every single artist in history of guitar has used, 18:26.960 --> 18:30.200 but just because it now is in the content ID database, 18:30.200 --> 18:33.080 he can't do it or do it and make any money from it. 18:33.080 --> 18:37.000 This is stifling new creators to benefit 18:37.000 --> 18:39.240 these collecting rights societies or to benefit 18:39.240 --> 18:42.240 these old monopolists and there's no justification for it. 18:42.240 --> 18:47.440 When we transform this debate to the whole free software debate, 18:47.440 --> 18:50.240 some people argue that we need software patents 18:50.240 --> 18:52.560 in order to protect products from being copied 18:52.560 --> 18:56.080 and that the current system encourages investments 18:56.080 --> 18:57.480 in innovation. 18:57.480 --> 18:59.920 What do you think about this argument? 18:59.920 --> 19:03.240 Well, it's a theoretically good argument 19:03.240 --> 19:05.120 in the sense that it fits the form 19:05.120 --> 19:06.960 of why we would want patents. 19:06.960 --> 19:09.680 You know, we want patents where it's creating 19:09.680 --> 19:12.520 an incentive to invest that otherwise wouldn't be there. 19:12.520 --> 19:14.360 So this fits the form. 19:14.360 --> 19:16.360 It turns out not to be true though, right? 19:16.360 --> 19:18.800 You don't need patents in the context of software 19:18.800 --> 19:21.040 to create the incentive to make the software. 19:21.040 --> 19:25.320 And we don't have an absence of software innovation 19:25.320 --> 19:27.480 where we have an absence of software patents. 19:27.480 --> 19:29.360 In fact, it's to the contrary, 19:29.360 --> 19:32.360 where you've got a field of software patents. 19:32.360 --> 19:35.320 What that does is concentrate software innovation 19:35.320 --> 19:37.960 in companies that can afford the lawyers necessary 19:37.960 --> 19:40.200 to defend against the patent claims. 19:40.200 --> 19:42.000 And we've seen this not just in software, 19:42.000 --> 19:44.480 we've seen this in agribusiness, for example. 19:44.520 --> 19:49.440 As you've created patents on agricultural innovations, 19:49.440 --> 19:52.480 the only companies that can afford to be in the business 19:52.480 --> 19:57.040 are companies that can aggregate all these patent portfolios 19:57.040 --> 19:58.160 so that when they're in a fight, 19:58.160 --> 20:01.520 they have like 10,000 patents to launch against 20:01.520 --> 20:04.200 your 2,000 patents and you'll have to give into them. 20:04.200 --> 20:08.920 It's all a game of consolidation and support 20:08.920 --> 20:12.200 for these big businesses that want to stifle the opportunity 20:12.200 --> 20:13.280 for new innovators. 20:13.280 --> 20:15.280 So we imagine the internet was going to be the space 20:15.280 --> 20:17.720 where anybody anywhere could become a coder. 20:17.720 --> 20:21.040 Well, until you code something, that's worth something, 20:21.040 --> 20:22.800 and then you've got to confront the patents 20:22.800 --> 20:24.080 that are running on this code. 20:24.080 --> 20:27.560 And it's not that you've copied anything from anybody 20:27.560 --> 20:29.640 because patent law doesn't require you copy, 20:29.640 --> 20:32.680 a copy readily, you have to affirmatively copy something. 20:32.680 --> 20:34.320 But patent law, if you just are practicing 20:34.320 --> 20:36.720 the same invention that somebody else has patented, 20:36.720 --> 20:38.120 even if you came up with it yourself, 20:38.120 --> 20:39.760 you still are violating the patent. 20:39.760 --> 20:41.920 So you come up with a great new technology, 20:41.920 --> 20:42.840 you want to deploy it, 20:42.840 --> 20:45.080 you then have to hire a patent firm 20:45.080 --> 20:46.520 to be able to clear the patents. 20:46.520 --> 20:48.920 If there are other patents reading on your invention, 20:48.920 --> 20:50.840 then you've got to negotiate for the right to do that. 20:50.840 --> 20:53.000 Well, if you're just a software developer, 20:53.000 --> 20:54.400 you can't negotiate. 20:54.400 --> 20:55.760 You don't have any leverage. 20:55.760 --> 20:57.560 So you have to sell it to a company 20:57.560 --> 21:00.880 who then can leverage because they have their own patents. 21:00.880 --> 21:03.080 Who is this benefiting? 21:03.080 --> 21:04.520 It's not benefiting innovation. 21:04.520 --> 21:06.320 It's just benefiting the opportunity 21:06.320 --> 21:08.760 to consolidate these large companies 21:08.760 --> 21:12.800 as the Uber innovators. 21:12.800 --> 21:15.160 And obviously, I think that stifles 21:15.160 --> 21:17.160 the opportunity for innovation. 21:17.160 --> 21:20.080 Then one last question from my side. 21:20.080 --> 21:21.600 How would a society look like 21:21.600 --> 21:23.760 when we don't have those software patents 21:23.760 --> 21:26.240 and all the code out there regulating people 21:26.240 --> 21:28.040 would be free software? 21:28.040 --> 21:30.800 Well, I think if you didn't have a software patents, 21:30.800 --> 21:33.560 you'd have an opportunity for a wider range of innovators. 21:33.560 --> 21:36.200 I just think intuitively more innovation 21:36.200 --> 21:38.080 is better in this space. 21:38.080 --> 21:40.680 If it were free software that were regulating people, 21:40.680 --> 21:45.160 the opportunity to surface the improper regulations 21:45.160 --> 21:46.120 would be greater. 21:46.120 --> 21:48.800 The opportunity to challenge regulations 21:48.800 --> 21:50.360 that were improper would be greater. 21:50.360 --> 21:54.760 And you would feed an industry of kind of lawyer types 21:54.760 --> 21:58.720 who could begin to test whether this type of software regulation 21:58.720 --> 22:01.800 is consistent with the values of a society. 22:01.800 --> 22:05.000 Now, fortunately now we have many more lawyers 22:05.000 --> 22:08.680 who are actually technologists, too, actually coders as well. 22:08.680 --> 22:13.200 If we had a platform open for them to investigate 22:13.200 --> 22:14.520 the way they can go investigate 22:14.520 --> 22:17.160 whether a bureaucracy is following the law, 22:17.160 --> 22:20.600 I think we could begin to force the infrastructure 22:20.600 --> 22:24.640 of regulation called code to conform more fundamentally 22:24.640 --> 22:27.000 to the values that we say are fundamental 22:27.000 --> 22:29.640 values of a society. 22:29.640 --> 22:31.320 So now my last question. 22:31.320 --> 22:33.480 Imagine you could travel back in time 22:33.480 --> 22:36.720 and change history, in which time would you travel 22:36.720 --> 22:38.840 and what would you like to change? 22:41.920 --> 22:46.640 Well, you know that since 2007, since Anne Aaron Swartz 22:46.640 --> 22:49.280 sort of forced me to give up my work on copyright 22:49.280 --> 22:52.600 and the internet and take up this corruption work 22:52.600 --> 22:54.280 at a corruption of our democracy. 22:54.280 --> 22:56.120 That's been my obsession. 22:56.120 --> 22:59.480 So it's about a dozen years now that this is what I've been 22:59.480 --> 23:00.920 thinking about every day I wake up. 23:00.960 --> 23:04.640 I'm publishing my sixth book about this year. 23:04.640 --> 23:06.080 So I want to solve that problem 23:06.080 --> 23:08.200 because I'm tired of fighting it. 23:08.200 --> 23:09.800 So what would I do to solve it? 23:09.800 --> 23:13.360 Well, you know, we could go back in any number of places 23:13.360 --> 23:17.800 and talk about inserting into our constitution 23:17.800 --> 23:19.800 something I think the framers of our constitution 23:19.800 --> 23:24.080 took for granted, which is that everyone is an equal citizen 23:24.080 --> 23:26.560 with equal political rights. 23:26.560 --> 23:29.080 Because every problem with the American democracy right now 23:29.080 --> 23:31.160 is a problem of equality. 23:31.160 --> 23:36.400 So the way we fund campaigns with a tiny fraction 23:36.400 --> 23:40.520 of the 1% funding the campaigns that candidates gather 23:40.520 --> 23:45.320 to get to office is in inequality of political power. 23:45.320 --> 23:47.040 The way that systems are gerrymandered 23:47.040 --> 23:49.720 is in equality of political inequality of political power. 23:49.720 --> 23:52.640 The way votes get suppressed if you happen to be black 23:52.640 --> 23:54.760 or if you happen to be a Democrat and a Republican state 23:54.760 --> 23:57.120 is in inequality in political power. 23:57.160 --> 24:00.280 These are all ways that we've allowed a core promise 24:00.280 --> 24:04.480 of a representative democracy that it is equal to be corrupted. 24:04.480 --> 24:06.440 So I would at any number of points, 24:06.440 --> 24:10.360 we could say I have a 1787 or 1936 24:10.360 --> 24:12.440 or when the 14th Amendment was passed, 24:12.440 --> 24:16.080 I would just add three or four words into those texts 24:16.080 --> 24:19.840 that would have made this fundamental point enforceable 24:19.840 --> 24:22.680 so that we wouldn't live in this deeply corrupted 24:22.680 --> 24:24.640 so-called democracy that still pretends 24:24.640 --> 24:26.360 like it's the greatest democracy in the world 24:26.360 --> 24:31.360 yet is corrupted the core commitment of a democracy. 24:32.640 --> 24:34.000 Larry, thank you very much. 24:34.000 --> 24:34.720 Thank you for your time. 24:34.720 --> 24:35.720 Thank you for your work. 24:35.720 --> 24:39.520 I am such an admirer of the work of the Free Software Foundation 24:39.520 --> 24:42.120 especially the work in Europe of what you've been doing, 24:42.120 --> 24:45.160 building here and I've admired the fight against software 24:45.160 --> 24:46.520 patents when you were winning it 24:46.520 --> 24:48.360 and I've been sad at the moments 24:48.360 --> 24:51.520 where it seems like the other side has mustard more power 24:51.520 --> 24:52.360 than you. 24:52.360 --> 24:53.360 Thank you, Derry. 24:53.400 --> 24:57.400 This was the fifth episode of the Software Freedom Podcast. 24:57.400 --> 25:00.440 If you liked this episode, please recommend it to your friends 25:00.440 --> 25:04.240 and subscribe to make sure you also get the next episode. 25:04.240 --> 25:06.040 And if you are listening to this podcast 25:06.040 --> 25:09.320 on a platform where you can give us a rating, please do so. 25:09.320 --> 25:10.920 This podcast is presented to you 25:10.920 --> 25:13.000 by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 25:13.000 --> 25:16.000 We are a charity that works on promoting software freedom. 25:16.000 --> 25:17.440 If you like our work, 25:17.440 --> 25:19.680 please consider supporting us with a donation. 25:19.680 --> 25:23.720 You find more information on your FSFE.org slash the net. 25:23.720 --> 25:25.000 Thank you for your support. 25:25.000 --> 25:26.320 See you next time, bye. 25:26.320 --> 25:27.160 Bye bye. 25:27.160 --> 25:45.160 Here's another voice from our large community. 25:45.160 --> 25:46.440 Hi, I'm Bjorn Schiesler. 25:46.440 --> 25:49.760 I came to the FSFE 13 years ago as a volunteer 25:49.760 --> 25:51.440 where I started translating the web page 25:51.440 --> 25:53.680 and stayed as a volunteer since then. 25:53.680 --> 25:55.600 I think FSFE is really important 25:55.600 --> 25:57.960 to have an independent voice in Europe 25:57.960 --> 25:59.440 to talk about free software costs. 25:59.440 --> 26:01.760 It becomes more and more important in a digital society.