Lessig presented a very interesting talk entitled Three stories and an argument at TED recently. It’s well worth watching for both it’s content and delivery. The basic argument is familiar. Since digital technology and tools are becoming cheaper and easier to use the cost of producing and remixing copyrighted material is becoming very cheap. Add to this the cheap availability of an efficient communications platform (the Internet with its applications) large groups of people are moving from cultural consumers to becoming consumer/producers.

Professional creators in the past (musicians, authors, filmmakers etc) have always taken culture and remixed it. Taken different ideas and re-packaged them in order to create something new. Most of our ideas have not emerged in great leaps but in many small (inevitable?) steps. Today the technology is making this process more democratic in that the amateur is invading the realm of the professional – and, as Lessig puts it, this does not mean that the material produced is amateurish. It refers to amateur in the true sense of the word it is done out of love rather than money.

The major barrier to all this is copyright law. The problem with this is that the ability to take parts of our culture and remix them is an accepted form of communication among large groups of people and the institutional response has been criminalization. Copyright law has produced the presumption that remixing is illegal in particular in the digital realm. Since every use of culture in the digital realm entails a copy therefore every use should require permission.

This is an inefficient system that goes against the way in which people act. We are developing a system where people are aware that they are acting in violation to the law but they do not feel that this is wrong. Lessig warns about the growth of copyright extremism on both sides: One side builds new technologies to protect copies while the opponent cry out for the abolition of copyright.

Much of my time is spent advising university lecturers on the ways in which they can and cannot use new technologies in the classroom. The university of today is required to connect and compete with a generation of people who are connected and digitally sophisticated. In our attempts to connect and educate we provide students with laptops, wireless connectivity and digital material.

In all this copyright is creating a barrier to effective use of ICT in education. Lecturers and students attempting to benefit from online material are being driven to acting against the law. Copyright law limits the use of web2.0 technologies such as Blogs, YouTube and Flickr in the lecture halls, but the need to connect and educate is driving dedicated lecturers to circumvent, avoid, bend and break the law. This is not a good situation.

The problem is that the law has become inadequate for our needs. In order to ensure copyright control the legislator has forgotten to allow people to remix and to allow educators to use copyrighted material to a greater extent. This is not an argument for making mass copies of the latest Hollywood film – “pure” copyright “piracy” is, and should be, illegal.

But there is a need to allow access to culture beyond the passive consumer role. It also makes good business and democratic sense since it takes the edge away from the extremist positions, which threaten to push the discussions into chaos – as extremism, does. It is an argument to allow non commercial uses of copyrighted material without the fear of reprisals which exists today.