Via the excellent Browser, here is a significant and subtle article by Lawrence Lessig about how changing technology creates unfathomable complications and difficulties for sorting out legal rights to books and films made decades ago under very different circumstances.

The key point is that for films especially, the array of private copyright rights and other procedural issues needing to be dealt with if old films are to be revived is so complex that the films themselves risk decaying and being lost for lack of anyone to grip the issue.

For books the issue is more straightforward, although as Google’s attempts to put vast numbers of books online show, still not without all sorts of pitfalls.

Nothing more to be said by me on the subject. Just read it, and ponder what might be done to hack through all the legal undergrowth to reach a fair (enough) outcome. Is something like this the answer?

… why should copyright owners not be permitted to agree to whatever complicated system of access they want? It’s their property, isn’t it?

Here we come back to Property 101. The law has always set limits on the freedom of property owners to allocate their property as they want. Families in Britain wanted to control how estates passed down the family line.

At a certain point, their wants became way too complicated. The response was rules–such as the Rule Against Perpetuities — designed to enhance the efficiency of the market by limiting the freedom of property owners to place conditions on their property, thus making it possible for property to move more simply.

That is precisely the impulse I wish to recommend here: that we limit the freedom of lawyers to craft infinitely complicated agreements governing culture, so that access to our culture can be preserved…