we may be familiar with creative commons, yet may not know very much the context why it was born. and one of the important person behind cc is lawrence lessig.
here is his lecture (a flash presentatoin) on the idea of refrain and free culture.
a very good presentation with cases and brief history of US copyright laws.
in a way, you can say US has very "refined" law, it is revised 7th times. yet, those laws, are very much formed because of its highly commericalzied setting that creativity, and creative works are considered more a property, like a house or a car, rather than something to share, or collective knowledge.
in its lecture, he also talks about the idea of time, that we should build up things by working on things in the past, not to be restricted from.
the idea of regulated use and fair use are also the important ground for the practice of the creative commons.
i need more time to think more in the very specific context in hong kong.
yet one vital issue for us is to seperate pirates copies people get in the streets and free sharing on web. these are 2 very different notion. many people, especially music and film industries mix them up.
one danger of putting up laws without reconsider the above issues mentioned is to "kill" the very localized unique character of hong kong on parody and appropriation methods, even in the popular culture (stephen chow's films, or cutlure). that is people reuse, manipulate, play with ideas and existing collective understanding and to produce something new in which there is a "new" comment on.
after reading lessig and this lecture, i realize it is really dangerous to go for copy right law in hk in such a simple sense that big companies are losing money.
i need more time to think...
share with you the lecture, very good.