Lawrence Lessig of the Stanford University School of Law (and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Jeff Tweedy of the rock band Wilco shared a dais last Thursday at the NY Public Library, where they spoke on issues of peer-to-peer file sharing, intellectual property, and copyright. This NY Times story by David Carr reports on the event (registration required). Carr terms Lessig “one of the philosopher kings of Internet law” and calls Tweedy “the crown prince of indie music.” (Is there somewhere we can write to second the nominations?)

Lessig blogs about his dissatisfaction with the NY Times article, saying that it perpetuates a false dichotomy between “supporting piracy” and “opposing piracy.” I understand Lessig’s frustration, though I also think it’s a bit of a stretch to expect a nuanced, reflective essay from a newspaper’s coverage of a public event involving a rock star. I’m also not sure that Lessig’s notion of “remix culture,” one that I find very compelling, can avoid charges of piracy if that idea includes not only fair use but the ability to morph original creations by digital manipulation and resell them for a profit on the open market. Everyone cites The Grey Album as the poster child of remix culture, but even with much-needed reforms in copyright law and a thorough reworking of the DMCA, or even its elimination altogether, do we really think artists should be forced to let anyone with a PC and a sound card (and, as Danger Mouse admitted, a bootleg copy of Sound Forge Acid) take the music they’ve crafted over a lifetime of devotion to their art and treat it merely as raw material for a “remix”?

I’m still thinking over all these issues, as is Lessig (just one of the reasons I admire his work). In a blog yesterday he asks, “is there a way to protect the legitimate IP interests of the copyright holders, without polluting remix culture?”

Apparently an archived webcast of the NYPL event will be available at some point.