Tonight Lawrence Lessig — copyright warrior and one of the brilliant minds behind Creative Commons, in case you haven’t heard — will appear at The Booksmith on Haight to talk about his new book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. (He’ll even sign copies, if you’re into that kind of thing.) The argument will be familiar to readers of Free Culture: our system of copyright places extraordinary power to control culture and entertainment in the hands of a small handful of powerful entities (can anyone say Disney?), because those entities can use the law to bring crushing lawsuits against individuals who would build on their work.

The well-supported thesis of this book is that all art is remixed art. Where would Shakespeare be without all those plot lines he cribbed from older sources? And imagine if independent artists in Renaissance Italy were barred from using Christian imagery in their work for private patrons because it would have been the “intellectual property” of the Catholic Church?

Well, you get the point: the subject of this book is relevant to you even if you didn’t read Free Culture on a laptop you refurbished yourself, running Ubuntu. (Yes, that was a geek brag.)

Lessig will be at the store at 7:30 PM tonight.