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7cde228
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Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.
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economics
law
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Lawrence Lessig |
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c735d5c
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Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last.
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pirates
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Lawrence Lessig |
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51ebc8c
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Why should it be that just when technology is most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive?
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Lawrence Lessig |
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c6df903
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That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the pages that follow, we come from a tradition of "free culture"--not "free" as in "free beer" (to borrow a phrase from the founder of the freesoftware movement[2] ), but "free" as in "free speech," "free markets," "free trade," "free enterprise," "free will," and "free elections." A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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dc9e8f5
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If "piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission- if "if value, then right" is true- then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of "big media" today- film, records, radio, and cable TV-was born of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last generation's pirates join this generation's country club-until now."
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piracy
media
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Lawrence lessig |
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64da88d
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If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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f88bdf6
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Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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2eae641
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Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.
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over-regulation
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Lawrence Lessig |
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b708762
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Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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1e8b974
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And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
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writing
thought-provoking
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Lawrence Lessig |
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97ce695
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On December 17, 1903, on a windy North Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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b1220d9
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The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been prove..
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writing
open-government
ideas
internet
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Lawrence Lessig |
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d31fae4
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But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival for certain businesses or, more accurately, business models. Thus we must keep i mind the other values or objectives that might also be affected by this war. We must make sure this war doesn't cost more than it is worth. We must be sure it is winn..
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war
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Lawrence Lessig |
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aaf3106
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In the 1970s, 3 percent of retiring members became lobbyists. Thirty years later, that number has increased by an order of magnitude. Between 1998 and 2004, more than 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of House members made that career transition.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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175a311
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If "piracy" means using value from someone else's creative property without permission from that creator-as it is increasingly described today - then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV... Extremists in this debate love to say "You wouldn't go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different wi..
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piracy
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Lawrence Lessig |
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6712648
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Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally.
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Lawrence lessig |
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6258b59
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Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the "Innovator's Dilemma": the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media companies will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that is copyrigh..
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culture
creativity
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Lawrence Lessig |
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fd74500
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Free culture depends upon vibrant competition. Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. The effect is to produce an over-regulated culture, just as the effect of too much control in the market is to produce an over-regulated-regulated market.
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regulation
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Lawrence Lessig |
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cc345ca
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But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of "taking" that is more directly related to the Internet. That taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before we paint this taking "piracy," however, we should understand its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past...
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Lawrence Lessig |
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1df2144
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We take this for granted in America today: a democracy in which the first test of credibility is not votes, or broad public support, but money.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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c0075e9
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It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That's not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest.
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past
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Lawrence Lessig |
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708148d
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The obvious point of Conrad's cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention technologies) are illegal. Flash: No one ever died from copyright circumvention. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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286c26c
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But sometimes they're just oblivious, and their obliviousness brings out the worst in me. I remember once talking to one about the principle of 'one person, one vote' -- the Supreme Court's doctrine that forces states to ensure the weight one person's vote is equal to the weight of everyone else's. He had done work early in his career to push that principle along, and considered it, as he told me, 'among the most important values now writte..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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4ce6649
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But it is to say that a basic idea of a representative democracy--one that argues over fundamental choices of policy, through the battle between differently committed representatives--is not the reality of our democracy anymore. We've settled into what Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy," where change of almost any kind, whether from the Right or the Left, is practically always stopped."
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Lawrence Lessig |
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f339e7e
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Every schoolchild learns of L'Enfant's design to make an invasion of Washington difficult. But more interesting is the placement of the White House relative to the Capitol. The distance between them is one mile, and at the time it was a mile through difficult terrain (the mall was a swamp). The distance was a barrier meant to tilt the intercourse between Congress and the president by making it marginally more difficult for them to connect--..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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4574107
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The question is: Which means best advances the regulator's goal, subject to the constraints (whether normative or material) that the regulator must recognize? My
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Lawrence Lessig |
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eb31d39
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If my writing produces angry reactions, then it might also effect a more balanced reflection. These are hard times to get it right, but the easy answers to yesterday's debate won't get it right.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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769f775
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Liberty in cyberspace will not come from the absence of the state. Liberty there, as anywhere, will come from a state of a certain kind. We build a world where freedom can flourish not by removing from society any self-conscious control, but by setting it in a place where a particular kind of self-conscious control survives. We build liberty as our founders did, by setting society upon a certain constitution.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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337b63c
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In speaking of a constitution in cyberspace we are simply asking: What values should be protected there? What values should be built into the space to encourage what forms of life?
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Lawrence Lessig |
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d12a0e1
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Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy. When
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Lawrence Lessig |
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908a473
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Peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing is among the most efficient of the efficient technologies the Internet enables. Using distributed intelligence, p2p systems facilitate the easy spread of content in a way unimagined a generation ago. This
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Lawrence Lessig |
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a8c1fc4
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Finalmente podemos argumentar que esse tipo de pirataria na verdade ajuda o dono do copyright. Quando os chineses "pirateiam" o Windows, isso torna a China dependente da Microsoft. A Microsoft perde o valor do software tomado. Mas ele ganha usuarios que estarao acostumados a viverem no mundo da Microsoft. Com o tempo, conforme as nacoes ficarem mais ricas, mais e mais pessoas irao comprar software ao inves de o piratear. E com tempo, ja que..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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83c967d
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Esse protecionismo nao visa proteger os artistas. Na verdade, esse e um protecionismo que visa proteger certas formas de negocio. As corporacoes ameacadas pelo potencial da Internet em mudar a forma como tanto a cultura comercial quanto a nao-comercial e feita e compartilhada se uniram para induzir os legisladores a usarem a lei para as protegerem. E o caso da RCA contra Armstrong; e o sonho dos Causbys.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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1da6d12
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Esse protecionismo nao visa proteger os artistas. Na verdade, esse e um protecionismo que visa proteger certas formas de negocio. As corporacoes ameacadas pelo potencial da Internet em mudar a forma como tanto a cultura comercial quanto a nao-comercial e feita e compartilhada se uniram para induzir os legisladores a usarem a lei para as protegerem. E o caso da RCA contra Armstrong; e o sonho dos Causbys. A Internet liberou uma incrivel poss..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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8ad9853
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A "guerra" que foi levantada contra as tecnologias da Internei o que o presidente da Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)6 Jack Valenti chamou de "sua propria Guerra Contra o Terror" [13] foi forjada como uma batalha pelo direito legal de respeito a propriedade. Para saber que lado assumir nessa guerra, muitos pensam que precisamos decidir apenas se somos a favor ou nao da propriedade privada. Se essas fossem as verdadeiras escolhas..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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632ac82
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E assim, quando os geeks e os tecnologos defendem as tecnologias dos novos Armstrongs ou irmaos Wright, muitos de nos nos tornamos simplesmente hostis. O bom senso nao fica revoltado. Diferentemente como no caso dos coitados dos Causbys, o bom senso esta do lado dos donos das propriedades nessa guerra. Diferentemente dos afortunados irmaos Wright, a Internet nao inspirou uma revolucao do nosso lado. A minha esperanca e trazer o bom senso de..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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fee5562
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enquanto a Internet criou algo completamente novo e maravilhoso, nosso governo, pressionado pelos grandes meios de comunicacao, reagiram dizendo que "essa coisa nova" estava destruindo algo muito velho. Ao inves de entender as mudancas que a Internet pode provocar, e ao inves de dar tempo para permitir ao "bom senso" reagir da melhor maneira possivel, nos estamos permitindo aqueles mais ameacados por tais mudancas que utilizem sua forca"
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Lawrence Lessig |
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147f165
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Mas apenas eleicoes nao fazem uma democracia. Democracia quer dizer poder para o povo, mas poder quer dizer algo mais que apenas eleicoes. Em nossa tradicao isso tambem significa controle atraves de criticas racionais.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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19daca3
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Nos, a mais poderosa democracia do mundo, criamos normas rigidas contra a discussao politica. E OK falar de politica com pessoas que concordam com voce. Mas e grosseiro falar de politica com pessoas que discordam de voce. O discurso politico tornou-se isolado, e discurso isolado torna-se mais radical. [42] Nos falamos o que nossos amigos esperam ouvir, e ouvimos muito pouco alem do que eles falam.
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Lawrence Lessig |
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d8de43c
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Mas alem da arquitetura, os blogs tambem resolveram o problema das regras. Nao existe (ainda) nenhuma regra no meio dos blogs que diga que nao deve-se falar de politica. Na verdade, o meio esta repleto de discussoes politicas, de direita e de esquerda. Alguns dos mais populares blogs sao conservadores, outros liberais, mas ha blogs de todas as tendencias politicas, e mesmo blogs em que nao-politicos falam de politica quando a situacao torna..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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28018d5
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Esse ciclo diferenciado e possivel porque as pressoes comerciais que existem em outros meios nao existem nos blogs. A televisao e os jornais sao entidades comerciais. Elas precisam trabalhar para manter a atencao. Se perdem leitores, perdem faturamento. Como tubaroes, precisam nadar atras da proxima "noticia quente". Mas os bloggers nao possuem amarras semelhantes. Eles podem molestar, eles podem se focar, eles podem ficar serios. Se uni bl..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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4ff46b4
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Existe um outro motivo para o fato dos blogs terem um ciclo de vida diferente dos principais meios de comunicacao. Como Dave Winer, um dos pais desse movimento e um desenvolvedor de software por varias decadas, me disse, uma outra diferenca e a ausencia de "conflitos de interesses" provocados por motivos financeiros. "Eu penso que voce tem que remover esse conflito de interesses" do jornalismo, Winer me disse. "Um jornalista amador simplesm..
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Lawrence Lessig |
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46e123b
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E ele permite aos leitores "triangularem a verdade", como Winer definiu. Os blogs, Winer afirma, sao "uma comunicacao direta do constituinte, sem interferencias de intermediarios" com todos os beneficios e custos envolvidos."
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Lawrence Lessig |
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66ff8bc
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A defesa de ideias, a argumentacao e a critica melhoram a democracia.
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Lawrence Lessig |