In a democracy we ought to be able to do better

Following yesterday's post on copyright, I received a comment from Faris Yakob - very timely, as at the time I was attending the informal Melbourne Beer Sphere, a worldwide movement initiated by Faris himself!

Faris wrote to alert me to a recent TED talk from Larry Lessig, Stanford Professor of Law, and founder of Creative Commons. Larry's talk is titled "How Creativity is being strangled by the law". If you haven't already seen this, then invest 19 minutes of your time right now:

(Direct link to video)

"Among our kids, there's a growing copyright abolitionism, a generation that rejects the very notion of what copyright is supposed to do, rejects copyright and believes that the law is nothing more than an ass, to be ignored and to be fought at every opportunity possible."

I have to agree with Larry that the current copyright laws are inappropriate, and that "in a democracy, we ought to be able to do better." We should not be made to feel like criminals as we explore, create and learn.