beyondwebct

“If copyright law, at its core, regulates something called ‘copies,’ then in the analog world… many uses of culture were copyright-free,” he explained. “They didn’t trigger copyright law, because no copy was made. But in the digital world, very few uses are copyright-free because in the digital world … all uses produce a copy.”

Absolute open access does weaken the incentive to create insofar as scholars crave some tangible remuneration for their commercially published works. The solution to the problem, he said, probably lies in hybrid systems such as Creative Commons, of which he is a board member. Creative Commons licenses allow authors to designate what portions of their work can be copied and how it may be used, thereby avoiding the “thicket” of the copyright system — where, Lessig said, things are never nearly that simple.