自由文化
——大媒体如何利用技术和法律来禁锢文化和控制创造力
Written By Lawrence Lessig
Tranlated By Hiberantor
前言
在我第一本著作《代码：以及网络空间的其他规则》书评的结尾，那位名叫David Pogue的杰出作家和难以计量的技术和计算机相关文章的作者这样写道：
与现实中的规则不同，互联网软件没有能力惩罚。它对于那些并不在线的人毫无作为（而且只有很小比例的人在线）。如果你厌恶互联网系统，你随时可以关掉调制解调器。
Pogue对那本书的核心讨论部分——软件即“代码”以某种规则的形式发挥功能表示怀疑，并且他的评论潜在的表达了一种更为乐观的看法：即便网络生活让人不快，我们也可以随时“drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome”——就像简单的按动开关然后调头回家一样。关掉调制解调器，断开计算机电源，在那个空间中所存在的一切烦恼就不会再影响我们了。
Pogue或许在1999年还是对的——我怀疑，也许是这样。但是尽管在那个时候他是对的，现在那些观点也都出现了问题：《自由文化》一书正是关于即便关掉调制解调器互联网仍然带给我们的那些烦恼。本书讨论了那些关于线上生活的激烈斗争如何彻底的影响到离线生活中的人们。没有开关能让我们从互联网的影响中脱离。
但与前书不同，这里的讨论并不限于互联网本身。它把互联网视为我们传统的产物之一，这种讨论更加本质和重要——尤其是那些技术狂热者所愿意赞同的。
所谓传统，就是文化产生的路径。正如我在后文将要解释的，我们来自于一种“自由文化”的传统——不是那种所谓“免费啤酒(Free Beer)”中的“免费(Free)”（这里借用了免费软件(Free Software)运动的发起者的一个短语），而是“自由演说”、“自由市场“、“自由贸易”、“自由企业”、“自由意志”和“自由选举”中的“自由”。一个自由的文化支持并保护创新者和变革家。它直接依靠保障知识产权来做到这一点，但也通过限制那些权利的范围来间接保证后来的创新者和变革家在以前的创新者的控制下尽可能自由。自由文化绝非否定私产的文化，就像自由市场中也不是所有的东西都自由一样。自由文化的反面是“权限文化”——一种创新者只能在力量或从前的创新者的授权下才能创造的文化。
假如我们理解这种变化，我们一定会抵抗它。不是“我们”左或是“你们”右的问题，而是我们在这个定义了20世纪的特殊的工业文化中已无立锥之地。无论你属于左翼还是右翼，只要你有无私的意识，那么我讲的这个故事就会影响到你。因为我所描述的变化影响到了我们的政治文化中的两派都认为本质的价值观念。
瞥一眼2003年初夏的两党联袂上演的缠斗。正当联邦通信委员会考虑改变所有制以放松媒体集权限制时，超乎寻常的70万封信件联名寄往联邦通信委员会抗议这种改变。如William Safire描述的“令人不安的CodePink妇女和平组织和国家枪支联合会，在自由如Olympia Snowe和保守如Ted Stevens中间排列成行，”他的描述可能正直击危险之处：权力的集中。他问道：
这就不意味着保守？对我来说并非如此。权力的集中——政治的、商业的、媒体的、文化的——应该是对保守分子的诅咒。政府控制下的权力扩散并鼓励个人力量的参与，是联邦制度的核心和民主最伟大的表达方式。
这种观点就是“自由文化”所讨论的元素之一，尽管我关注的并不仅仅在由所有制引发的权力的集中，还包括并不显眼的却更为重要的，由规则有效范围变化而引发的权力的集中。规则在变，文化产生的路径也随之变化，这种变化会让你忧虑——无论你是否关心互联网，是倾向Safire的“左”还是“右”。
本书题目以及大部分观点的灵感来自于Richard Stallman的著作和自由软件基金会。确实，当我重读Stallman的原著，特别是《自由软件》和《自由社会》中的文章，我意识到我在这里阐发的理论无非是Stallman几十年前所论及的。你可以因此说本书“只不过”是派生的。
我接受这种批评，如果它确实是一种批评的话。律师的著作都是派生的，而我只不过想在本书中对文化提出一种一直以来都保持自我的传统。和Stallman一样，我坚持认为传统是建立在价值观念的基础之上的。并且相信这样的价值观应该是自由。我更加相信存在于过去的价值观念将需要在未来同样的加以捍卫。一个自由的文化曾经是我们的过去，但是如果我们不改变现在所走的路径，这种自由文化将在未来丧失。
正如Stallman在自由软件上的论述，对于自由文化的讨论建立在一种难以逃避也难以理解的混淆之上。自由文化并不会否定财产的概念；它不是一种艺术家不赚钱的文化。否定（知识）财产，或者其中的创新者不能得到报酬的文化是一种无政府主义的混乱，而并非自由。这种无政府主义不是我要在此提倡的。
换言之，我在此捍卫的自由文化是一种介于无政府主义和管制的均衡。自由文化和自由市场一样，充满了各种财产，充满了各种财产的规则和由政府强制的契约。但是也如自由市场在财产成为封建性时市场就出现了失灵一样，自由文化也会被由规定它的财产权利中的极端主义搞糟。那也是我对我们今天的文化所恐惧的事情。这本书的写作正是针对这样的极端。
附原文如下，欢迎指正！
FREE CULTURE
HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE
LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE AND CONTROL
CREATIVITY
LAWRENCE LESSIG
HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND
THE LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE
AND CONTROL CREATIVITY
PREFACE
At the end of his review of my first book, Code: And Other Laws of
Cyberspace, David Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless
technical and computer-related texts, wrote this:
Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It
doesn’t affect people who aren’t online (and only a tiny minority
of the world population is). And if you don’t like the Internet’s
system, you can always flip off the modem.1
Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book—that software,
or “code,” functioned as a kind of law—and his review suggested
the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could always
“drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome”-like simply flip a switch and be back
home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any troubles
that exist in that space wouldn’t “affect” us anymore.
Pogue might have been right in 1999—I’m skeptical, but maybe.
But even if he was right then, the point is not right now: Free Culture
is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the modem is turned
off. It is an argument about how the battles that now rage regarding life
on-line have fundamentally affected “people who aren’t online.” There
is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet’s effect.
But unlike Code, the argument here is not much about the Internet
itself. It is instead about the consequence of the Internet to a part of
our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for
a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important.
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
movement2), 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 intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting
the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and
innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free
culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a
market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a
“permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only
with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.
If we understood this change, I believe we would resist it. Not “we”
on the Left or “you” on the Right, but we who have no stake in the
particular industries of culture that defined the twentieth century.
Whether you are on the Left or the Right, if you are in this sense disinterested,
then the story I tell here will trouble you. For the changes I
describe affect values that both sides of our political culture deem fundamental.
We saw a glimpse of this bipartisan outrage in the early summer of
2003. As the FCC considered changes in media ownership rules that
would relax limits on media concentration, an extraordinary coalition
generated more than 700,000 letters to the FCC opposing the change.
As William Safire described marching “uncomfortably alongside
CodePink Women for Peace and the National Rifle Association, be-
tween liberal Olympia Snowe and conservative Ted Stevens,” he formulated
perhaps most simply just what was at stake: the concentration
of power. And as he asked,
Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration
of power—political, corporate, media, cultural—should be anathema
to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control,
thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence
of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy.3
This idea is an element of the argument of Free Culture, though my
focus is not just on the concentration of power produced by concentrations
in ownership, but more importantly, if because less visibly, on the
concentration of power produced by a radical change in the effective
scope of the law. The law is changing; that change is altering the way our
culture gets made; that change should worry you—whether or not you
care about the Internet, and whether you’re on Safire’s left or on his right.
The inspiration for the title and for much of the argument of
this book comes from the work of Richard Stallman and the Free Software
Foundation. Indeed, as I reread Stallman’s own work, especially
the essays in Free Software, Free Society, I realize that all of the theoretical
insights I develop here are insights Stallman described decades
ago. One could thus well argue that this work is “merely” derivative.
I accept that criticism, if indeed it is a criticism. The work of a
lawyer is always derivative, and I mean to do nothing more in this book
than to remind a culture about a tradition that has always been its own.
Like Stallman, I defend that tradition on the basis of values. Like
Stallman, I believe those are the values of freedom. And like Stallman,
I believe those are values of our past that will need to be defended in
our future. A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future
if we change the path we are on right now.
Like Stallman’s arguments for free software, an argument for free
culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder
to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not
a culture in which artists don’t get paid. A culture without property, or
in which creators can’t get paid, is anarchy, not freedom.Anarchy is not
what I advance here.
Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between
anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled
with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get
enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property
becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism
in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture
today. It is against that extremism that this book is written.
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