Debate 4

Date: Class 11, April 24, 2007

Students presenting: (4-6 people)

• Renat Lumpau (rlumpau at law harvard edu)
• Michael Broukhim (broukhim at fas harvard edu)
• Drew Bennett
• Jon Bashford (jbashford at law)
• Amanda Devereux (adevereux at law harvard edu)
• Adam Katz (akatz at fas harvard edu)

The Question

"Resolved: The outcome of the digital intellectual property crisis is crucial to whether or not the use of the Internet ultimately has a positive impact in terms of strengthening democracies."

Topic: The Free Culture Movement

The connection between the politics of the Internet and politics on the Internet might lie in the movements – the human networks – that are fueled by digital culture. The non-profit Creative Commons, with its forty-some international organizations around the world, has established one such network; Global Voices represents another. A new movement, called Free Culture, is growing up close to home, on Harvard’s campus, among others. Is cyber-activism the new environmentalism?

Team Resources: Argument in Support of the Resolution

Argument In Support of the Resolution: Debate Outline

Preliminary Comments and Research

• Team: In today's Financial Times (March 15) there are a couple of articles on the Google vs. Viacom battle, which in many ways embodies debate surrounding the 'digital intellectual property crisis.' The FT's editors believe that the future of the internet does depend on the outcome of this debate. If you don't have access to this article, please email me and I can copy and paste it. On that note, I don't have any of your emails - can we start a list-serve of sorts for this debate? Mailto: andrew[dot]bennett[at]tufts[dot]edu

• Another Op-ed relevant to the debate, this one by Lawrence Lessig.

• Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society: this article is perhaps a bit dated (1996), but it looks at the connection between participation in civil society in general and participation in politics and argues that copyright "is vital to maintaining the democratic character of public discourse in civil society" and thus it is important for copyright law to both protect proprietors' rights and allow room for transformative uses.

• Another article, Can the Information Commons Be Saved? How Intellectual Property Policies Are Eroding Democratic Culture & Some Strategies for Asserting the Public Interest (2003).

• MoveOn v. Viacom article + documents on Eff.org