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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 25, 2004
CONTACT: David Fish
(202) 289-8928
   

Foundation Launches
Intellectual Property Web Site

IPcentral.info and New Lessig Book Discussed at Nat. Press Club Lunch

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Progress & Freedom Foundation's Center for the Study of Digital Property is unveiling a new website - IPcentral.info - to provide experts and the public with information, resources, and perspective on issues of intellectual property in the Internet Age. The announcement will be made at a National Press Club debate on the future of the Internet between the Center's director, James V. DeLong, and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig.

The purpose of IPcentral.info is to provide material useful to anyone interested in issues of intellectual property in the Internet Age, an audience that encompasses journalists, government officials, policy wonks, creators, business people, and the legal profession, as well as the general content-loving public.

"Our basic slant is in favor of private property and free markets as organizing principles for economic activity, including creative activity, and this is reflected in our selection of material," reads the site's homepage. "But the site has links to those who take other views, so the browser can readily juxtapose the various positions."

One of IPcentral.info's links is to Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig's blog. In fact, it was a posting on that blog that led to today's discussion between Lessig and DeLong. An earlier blog by Lessig and the resulting exchange of ideas with DeLong led to today's decision to hold a 'bricks and mortar' debate. The Foundation's relationship with Lessig predates the blog exchange: Lessig attended at least one of the Progress & Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summits, and Foundation President Raymond L. Gifford was a law student of Lessig's at the University of Chicago. Gifford moderates today's exchange.

"Larry Lessig and Jim DeLong may be near opposites on copyright, open source and other legal and economic issues affecting the future of the Internet," Gifford said. "But there are congruities too, not the least of which is each man's depth of understanding and originality of thought. Free Culture Movement disciples and skeptics, as well as policymakers and the media, will benefit from this exchange."

Lessig's new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, will be on sale after the event.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a market-oriented think tank that studies the impact of the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

 

 

The Progress & Freedom Foundation