Prof. Lessig put together brief presentations on his blog outlining arguments for five Internet-related proposals that he thinks Congress should enact over the next year. The description for each proposal follows:
Copyright: Orphan Works: Orphan Works legislation is critical. Nonetheless, I strongly oppose the Copyright Office’s “Orphan Works Proposal.†I think it is extraordinarily unfair to current copyright owners, and insanely inefficient. My proposal applies an “Orphan Works Maintenance Requirement†to older works only; the requirement is a form of registration.
Copyright: Remix Culture: Congress should carve a robust exemption to the law for non-commercial remix. Commercial use of such remixes should be regulated by a baseline statutory license.
Network Neutrality: No surprise: I support Network Neutrality legislation. Unfortunately, too many of the reigning proposals are, imho, radically too difficult to enforce. I’ll propose a much simpler rule to enforce that would achieve the legitimate objectives of NN.
Spam: The email system is broken. A bazaar of private remedies to deal with spam now clog the system to defeat many of its original objectives. I’ll propose a modified version of an earlier idea to deal with this problem — a problem that costs the American public many times the total profits of the recording industry, but has gotten but a fraction of Congress’s attention.
Harmful to Minors Material: There’s a simple and minimally burdensome way Congress could protect kids online from material deemed “harmful to minors.†Not perfectly, but certainly better than the current regime. And without constitutional risk.
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