Whoa There, Larry

After listening to Larry Lessig's fiery speech on free culture, I have to say, I was a little confused. Not knowing much about the issue, it seemed like he was saying we should have no copyrights, everything should be free and we should all live together in some sort of communist fairy land where we plant flowers and sing that Coke song.

So I checked out EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), which he references in the speech and they don't seem like communists, but they do seem pretty smart. Their website says:

The dedicated people of EFF challenge legislation that threatens to put a price on what is invaluable; to control what must remain boundless. Because being able to share ideas and information is the reason the Web was created in the first place.

Now I totally get it. Many of the legal decisions about our online privacy and freedom are being made right now and, for the most part, I didn't even know it. As our lives become more and more entwined with emerging technologies, these decisions are going to have a huge impact on our lives.

I don't believe we should do away with all copyrights, as Larry seems to advocate, but I do believe that we should be able to build on our common knowledge and not value profit more than we value freedom.