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Comment by Lawrence Lessig

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Harvard Law professor
She was able to do all the things she did because the technology is oblivious to whether she had permission to do what she did. The Internet was not built with permissions in mind. Free access was the rule. We can see the first by returning to the picture of what made this network amazing — interoperability. Widespread DRM would disable that interoperability. Or at least, it would disable interoperability without permission first. We could remix, or add, or criticize, using digital content, only with the permission of the content controller. And that requirement of permission first would certainly disable a large part of the potential that the Internet could realize. AI Unverifiable source (2005)
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Policy proposals and claims
Grant developers the right to interoperate with large platforms without permission

Verification History

AI Unverifiable Source URL (creativecommons.org Oct 2005 'CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Interoperability') returns HTTP 403 from WebFetch. Web search confirms this 2005 Lessig essay exists with the quoted content: he argues the Internet was built without permission requirements, that 'free access was the rule,' and that widespread DRM would disable interoperability - or at least disable it 'without permission first.' Vote (For 'Grant developers the right to interoperate with large platforms without permission') aligns precisely with Lessig's defence of permission-less interoperability. Marking ai_unverifiable per protocol because I cannot directly fetch the source. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 10d ago
replying to Lawrence Lessig