‘Free Culture’
June 5th, 2008Lawrence Lessig’s final ‘Free Culture’ speech, which took place on January 31st 2008 in Stanford University, was a stirring ‘call to arms’ for the continuation of the Creative Commons movement he founded 10 years previously. Lessig has decided to shift the emphasis of his energetic input to what he perceives to be a more urgent issue, that of ‘corruption in Washington’. He used the platform to deliver an impassioned communique which succinctly highlighted the essence of what he has selflessly focused on for the last decade. I wish him well.
In this, his ‘resignation’ speech, Lawrence Lessig has offered a very personal view of the state of the World Wide Web as he now sees it. Included within his presentation are clips from various sources to help illustrate his point of view. At one point, images of the Iraq war with dubbed commentary are shown. This highlights the dilemma:
By my inclusion of this video piece, am I also taking a political stance?
Can it be inferred that I also support Lessig’s views on global issues beyond that of web issues?
What ‘risk’ have I just taken for including this material?
Will it have unforeseen consequences for my supervisors who may not know that I have uploaded this and, in turn, my University?
From my perspective, I just wanted to let people know that the web ‘guru’ isn’t at all happy with current developments and that people might be interested in why. The irony is that my University has no knowledge that I have now included this link to my blog. If they did, what might they do? Who within the institution might be asked to ‘deal’ with it? Who might the person be who asks the ‘person’ to deal with it? …and so on.
Views on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
