Friday, January 23, 2009

How creativity is being strangled by the law

The most popular post on ancients.info this week is about copyright law. I was shocked. It's a topic few care about.

Is there any interest in a series on copyright law on the blog? I'd like to start with this video of Larry Lessig at TED talking on How creativity is being strangled by the law.



Lessig's examples are about amateur remixing audio and video. In his examples, the audio and video rights holders are known but won't license for less than tens of thousands of dollars. I'm particularly interested in is remixing catalogs, pictures of ancient coins, and amateur translations where the source material is out-of-print and the rightsholder is unfindable.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know what is the low about copyright in Usa but here in greece it's very hard.

The most basic exception of the copy holder of the project,is for private use only.If the user make it within the close family ,it is ok.However, the private use is not allowed to make problems of any type at the normal operation of the project.
Translation, reproduction is allowed if followed the aboves terms.( close family )
I believe if you want to do it for strongly private use is allowed,but if you like you can use some online translates sites for some parts that you want to read.
Remixing catalogs with out the lisence of the holder i believe this is problem.

Ed Snible said...

I did not know you were posting from Greece. I have a question about Greek law. I read in Peter Watson's book The Medici Conspiracy that Greek collectors must register either themselves or their collections.

What is that like? Is it like registering for a drivers' license where there is a written test?

Anonymous said...

Something like test no just the collector must not have legal problems.
When someone buys something must declare it at the Ministry of Culture,department for collectors, and if its ok there after they must go to Numismatic Museum for recording and authenticity the coins.
(Now if you think thats good,it isn't.I have coins at museum from 2005 )
Then the Ministry of Culture keep records for the collector and the coins.
Later if something changed with the registered records must informed the ministry to take the lisence for this.
I have a coin that i want to send to Mr Sear ,and i am waiting lisence for one year now.