Authors Guild Board member Steve Manes (“Let’s have less of Lessig”) and Stanford law professor Larry Lessig (“Sensitive” Manes “feels no hesitation in calling someone a ‘moron,’ ‘idiot,’ and ‘buffoon'”) are at it again in their two-combatant copyright war.
Now there’s even a Web forum associated with Forbes–the magazine where Manes let loose on Prof. Lessig–called Who’s Right about Copyright?
Is Manes just a mouthpiece for the Authors Guild? Alas, I think that he believes his anti-Lessig ranting in Forbes without the slightest need for prompting. But whatever the reason, his thinking may well jibe with that of the lawyer-friendly Guild. In character, the Guild came out in favor of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, while the National Writers Union had the foresight to oppose it. Bono enriches the heirs of best-selling authors at the expense of other writers–opening up new opportunities for copyright and estate lawyers along the way.
Meanwhile, in the Spring issue of the Authors Guild’s Bulletin, Executive Editor Kay Murray comes across as less than fully enthusiastic about the Creative Commons licenses of the kind that Larry Lessig champions. She concludes: “Should you add your works to the Creative Commons? The Guild advises caution. For those who want widespread dissemination of their works, there are other options.”
Granted, authors badly need the Guild’s protection, as a gothic-scary case history in the same issue of the Bulletin shows–that of a textbook author ripped off in the most blatant way by a publishing conglomerate. Still, mightn’t the Guild itself be part of the mess about which Lessig writes in Free Culture?
The emphasis of the lawyer-staffed Guild is on a legalistic approach. Got a problem with an unethical agent or publisher? Typically the Guild will just give you a opinion and refer you to a lawyer. It usually won’t intervene. While the Guild’s resources are limited, it at least should be promoting a less expensive mediation system for cases it can’t take time to investigate. Intellectual property lawyers often charge several hundred a hour–in fact, as high as $800 or more. Not the nicest of deals for a midlist writer.
Perhaps an appropriate foundation needs to shove a little cash in the Guild’s direction on the condition that the group focus more on informal intervention and mediation and less on lawyer referral.
Cooperation with Creative Commons might be good, too, and that could be a condition of the grant. Am I dreaming? Maybe. But maybe if the lawyers at the Guild take time to read Lessig’s book carefully, they’ll actually see the man is pro-copyright and in fact, like me, is even reactionary. We just have this weird notion that America needs to return to the old days when more balance existed between the rights of the copyright elite and the rest of us, including creators who aren’t corporations.
Example of the problem: A documentary film-maker couldn’t show a scene with a TV set displaying the Simpsons, because permission would have cost $10,000 for 4.5 seconds of exposure. You got that right. Just 4.5 seconds–and just on a little TV set in a corner of a room shown in the documentary! And beyond everything else, the greedsters threatened a lawsuit if word of the outrage got out.
How can anyone with an open mind read of such thuggish avarice and not agree with Lessig’s warnings against the Permissions Culture and its threat to creativity? If I can find time this week, I’ll review his book in detail, partly in the context of the Lessig-Manes feud, to show who the real idiot is. It isn’t Lessig.
Related: ‘Free Culture’: The Intellectual Imperialists, a mostly favorable New York Times review. Adam Cohen, however, a New York Times editorial writer, criticizes Lessig for not being more detailed in coming up with alternatives to the present mess. I can think of a few.
