"Well, that's it. You'll never have to listen to Stanford professor Larry Lessig talk about Free Culture again. Lessig is moving on - to fight the good fight against "Corruption". The technology-leaning lawyer announced this last year, but has continued to discuss Wikipedia, the Creative Commons and the like. That is until yesterday, when he delivered a 'last lecture' on Free Culture at Stanford University..."

Legal Issues about Contributing Code to GNU --- Project GNU has to be careful to obey intellectual property laws, even though these laws are wrong and people generally should share useful information without hesitation, because we are in the public eye. This means that if you want to contribute software, you have to do something to give us legal permission to use it.

"It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty."

It is an economic book that build a devastating case against patent and copyright laws.

Notes: It seem that book marks the GPL and other free software license as the exception and is something that they see as beneficial. It is something if possible they want to see preserved.

Today those who believe in free content and free and open source software won a major victory in court, as reported by Larry Lessig, Mark Radcliffe, and Pamela Jones, among others.

The World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) is organizing on October 29 and 30, 2007 at its Geneva headquarters an International Conference on Intellectual Property and the Creative Industries.

Creative Commons founder and Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig is giving his final presentation on Free Culture, Copyright and the future of ideas at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium on January 31st, 2008 from 1pm-2pm.

"...«Creative Commons founder and Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig is giving his final presentation on Free Culture, Copyright and the future of ideas at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium on January 31st, 2008 from 1pm-2pm. After 10 years of enlightening and inspiring audiences around the world with multi-media presentations that inspired the Free Culture movement, Professor Lessig is moving on from the copyright debate and setting his sites on corruption in Washington.»

One of the greatest tragedies of intellectual property law is how it generates intellectual confusion among successful businesspeople. Many are under the impression, even when it is not true, that they owe their wealth to copyrights, trademarks, and patents and not necessarily to their business savvy.

For this reason, they defend intellectual property as if it were the very lifeblood of their business operations. They fail to give primary credit where it is due: to their own ingenuity, willingness to take a risk, and their market-based activities generally. This is often an empirically incorrect judgment on their part, and it carries with it the tragedy of crediting the state for the accomplishments that are actually due to their own entrepreneurial activities.

"Lawrence Lessig is a genious. He decided to dedicate the next 10 years on ending corruption (after spending the past 10 years on reframing copyright issues)..."