Harvard Professor Lessig Calls GBS 2.0 “Path to Insanity”

As the January 28 deadline for GBS 2.0 public comment period quickly approaches, statements from settlement opponents are pouring in.  Today, Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig wrote an essay in The New Republic that called the settlement a “path to insanity” that will be “culturally asphixiating.”

Lessig believes the settlement bring major copyright questions to light and calls for an overhaul to copyright law:

The deal constructs a world in which control can be exercised at the level of a page, and maybe even a quote. It is a world in which every bit, every published word, could be licensed. It is the opposite of the old slogan about nuclear power: every bit gets metered, because metering is so cheap. We begin to sell access to knowledge the way we sell access to a movie theater, or a candy store, or a baseball stadium. We create not digital libraries, but digital bookstores: a Barnes & Noble without the Starbucks.