Is it really so bad to keep the content of a Flash movie under wraps? Could this be something that may need to change in the future? Will we see the day in which one can easily ’source’ a Flash file to take a peek at its contents? I say no, but others feel that it really ought to happen.

“Flash is the enemy,” said Lessig, a Stanford University professor and board member of the Free Software Foundation, as he described the opinions of leading free- and open-source-software advocates. These advocates “hate Flash. They think that by participating in the Flash community, you are feeding the devil.”

Lessig, addressing attendees of the Flashforward2005 conference here Wednesday, sounded familiar themes in his talk, titled “The Costs of Copyright.” He argued that the digital age has created new demands for the sharing of content that old-media copyright law cannot meet. As a result, he said, outdated copyright law is casting a pall over creative expression and education.

Despite the antipathy to Flash prevalent in open-source circles, Lessig called himself a Flash fan and implored designers and artists using the technology to free their work from conventional copyright protections.[Read the rest]