From
Web2001 Internet and Mobile conference and exposition at Moscone convention center in San Francisco August 4-8, comes an interesting set of keynote speakers offered to attendees. Rather than major computer or software company CEO's, we have commentators on our culture speaking to a conference full of web developers and corporate strategists charged with developing web initiatives.One very important speaker was Dr. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor, speaking on threat represented by corporate interests to creativity of web. A creativity being regularly squashed and supressed by legal wrangling and debate.
I attended Dr. Lessig's talk given to web developers at Web2001 9-7-01 and expected a lively debate when I visited his discussion forum at Harvard Law web site. To visit and see posts over a year old is disappointing and worries me. I purchased his book, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" at show and highly recommend it to all small business webmasters.
Dr. Lessig strongly advocates that creativity not be stifled by intellectual property owners asserting control over software and coding of web pages. This basically represents a viewpoint (and only in my own humble opinion, not Dr. Lessig's) in support of Open Source computing and freely available content for web with appropriate copyright protections extending only a short time to allow compensation of creator.
As a list owner that distributes content freely to web publishers and a columnist that publishes in multiple small business forums and portals around web, I am disturbed by control being sought by information "owners" over content.
My list at http://yahoogroups.com/group/free-content distributes articles written by small business owners to publishers of small business ezines and web sites across web. We have over 700 members, some representing very large distribution ezines and high-traffic web sites with potential exposure approaching 5 million readers.
