Free Culture by Lawrence Lessing

Lawrence Lessing's talk about Free Culture was interesting to hear. It made me think about copyrights on word documentation all around the Internet. He talked about the "refrain." This refrain consists of four parts:
1. Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
2. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it.
3. Free societies enable the future by limiting the past.
4. Ours is less and less a free society.

- publishers demanded a common law copyright that last forever.
- freed culture was a result of the Millar v. Taylor case.
- 1790 - established a regime that left creativity unregulated because copyright law only covered printing and it did not control derivative work for 14 years.
- all things protected are "FREE CODE"
- walt disney stole steamboat willie from buster keaton's steamboat bill jr. walt disney always parroted his disney films:
the littile mermaid(1989)
beauty and the beast (1991)
sleepy hollow (1958)
mulan (1998)
20,000 leagues (1954)
hunchback (1996)
jungle book (1967)
alice in wonderland (1951)
paul bunyon (1958)
sleeping beauty (1959)
cinderella (1950)
kidnapped (1960)
jonny appleseed (1955)
pinocchio (1940)

Learning about how disney movies was based on other people's work because that culture lived under an "intellectual common" where it was lawyer free was the most interesting part of this lecture.