I finally got a chance to watch the stream of Princeton University computer science professor Ed Felten’s lecture Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media. I had missed the live version of this lecture back in October, and had forgotten about it until Professor Felten mentioned it on Freedom to Tinker yesterday.
The lecture is just under an hour, followed by a short Q&A session, and gives an informative analysis and historical overview of the struggle between content providers and consumers for control over multi-use technologies.
At work, I experience on a fairly regular basis how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), if religiously enforced, can severely impede creativity and education. Often professors want to use video clips from CSS-encrypted DVDs to enhance the effectiveness of their lectures. “Fair Use” laws protect a professor’s right to use these clips, yet to get them off of the DVD and into PowerPoint would hypothetically require a felonious act of civil disobedience. While I would never openly advocate such an act on a public forum such as this, one can appreciate the ethical dilemma.
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