Lawrence Lessig delivered “Free Culture” in July 2002 at the Open Source Convention. If you read nothing else that I post here about copyright and your constitutionally-ordained fair-use rights, read this.

And if you don’t want to actually read this transcript, think on this, from Lessig:

• Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
• The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
• Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
• Ours is less and less a free society.