02/06/2007
Dropping Science On Sampling
I don't watch television, so I have plenty of time to read. And since I read a lot more non-fiction than anything else, it was almost inevitable that I'd stumble on the works of Lawrence Lessig.
Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School who's written extensively (several books worth) on how copyright laws and limitations on computer code effect our world and our ability to communicate, both as artists and as human beings sharing the web.
His writing has opened my mind appreciably. Instead of uncritically accepting the RIAA's blanket contention that "sampling is theft, pure and simple" (something I believed for years), after reading Free Culture , I began to think about why laws exist, and what copyright laws are supposed to do, and why they're so important that they're mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.
Lessig's argued important copyright cases in front of The U.S. Supreme Court, started Creative Commons and sits on the board of Public Knowledge . He's a clear, concise writer, who makes what might otherwise be legal gibberish throughly understandable.
I'm sure I'll be writing more about Lessig in posts to come; if you have any interest in this area at all, I'd advise checking his stuff out immediately.