Our Skype Conversation with Lawrence Lessig
October 18th, 2009
Remixes & Copyright Law
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Sites & Questions About YouTube
One of my film literacy classes had the chance this week to participate in a Skype video conference with Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. Professor Lessig is an expert in copyright law, and is on the board of directors of Creative Commons, a nonprofit corporation “dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.”
In his most recent book, Remix, he argues that we shouldn’t criminalize an entire generation of young people with outdated copyright laws.
It was very gracious of Professor Lessig to spend a half hour taking questions from my 7th graders. I edited the Skype conversation into two separate videos. This Skype session is part of our ongoing conversation about what we can and can’t do on the Internet. As Professor Lessig points out in our conversation, copyright is extremely complicated.