Last week I attended a lecture by Larry Lessig, which was fantastic, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit down and write about it…nearly a week later. I hope things will calm down a bit after the holiday season comes to an end. It would be nice to be able to write more than one entry each month!
Anyway, back to Lessig. 
A lot of really good ideas were presented at that meeting, but most of them boil down to one idea: The current political/business climate is unhealthy and potentially dangerous to innovation. Lessig advocates a “commons” approach to Internet technology, one that excludes no one and makes the same opportunities available for all—not just those running the leading company’s software.
There were too many interesting ideas for me to present in the few minutes that I have left to write, but one that I found very pratical was his suggestion about copyrights. If a copyright is a temporary, government-backed monopoly, existing purely to provide incentive (read as “profit”) for creativity, it stands to reason that monopoly should expire at some point (which copyrights do). The recent trend toward extending copyrights, Lessig argues, is fruitless, because nothing new is being created in exchange for the extension.
A much better solution for companies (or other entities who want to retain control of copyrights that retain commercial value after the copyright expires) would be to institute a copyright tax. Lessig suggested that the first 50 years of a copyright should be tax-free. Anything after that should require a nominal tax, say something like $10 a year for every year after the 50th. Copyright holders who fail to pay the tax after 50 years would lose the copyright and the copyrighted material would then become part of the public domain. This is a much better idea than simply extending the term of a copyright to 100 years, because only material that really deserves copyright protection (that is to say, is still earning money) would continue to get it after the normal copyright term expires.
Clever guy, that Lessig. I’m looking forward to reading his books.