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August 04, 2006, 03:14 PM ET
Reading and Writing at Wikimania
If any of the Wikipedia contributors who trekked to this year’s Wikimania conference needed a self-esteem boost, they surely got it from Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University law professor who has become something of a guru on matters of digital copyright. Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at Harvard University’s law school, Mr. Lessig heralded the open-source encyclopedia’s potential to "enable free culture in schools and colleges and universities everywhere."
The professor opened his speech with a quote from the composer John Philip Sousa, who famously worried that "infernal machines" like the phonograph would prevent listeners from creating their own music. "At the end of the 20th century," Mr. Lessig said, "it’s hard not to conclude that Sousa was right."
Over the course of the century, Mr. Lessig argued, "read/write culture"—in which consumers felt empowered to generate their own creative product—was replaced by "read-only culture"—in which corporate tactics and legal developments discouraged individuals from doing so. Wikipedia contributors, he said, stand alongside open-source programmers and mash-up artists in a movement that is using technology to democratize the spread of information and culture.
"Freedom is a bigger, more important value than proprietary instinct," Mr. Lessig said. —Brock Read
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