BOOK
The Gist: Key To Net Innovation - Access For All
$30
In last year's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, legal scholar Lawrence Lessig argued that the Internet's original democratic architecture "was changing, as governments and commerce increased the ability to control behavior in cyberspace." This time around, Lessig contends that similar shifts toward private ownership threaten the technological innovation we've been experiencing recently. At the heart of his stance is the notion that free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity. The Internet, and the entrepreneurialism it fostered, would not have been possible, he says, without a balance between private ownership (of real-space resources, code, and content) and public "commons" (made up of the physical infrastructure of free telephone lines, decentralized end-to-end architecture, universal protocols, open code, and unprecedented access to ideas and content).
But as the second-generation Internet emerges and consolidation within the telecom industry builds, that balance is off. Take, for instance, the radio spectrum, which is required for wireless communication and is being allocated as if it were property. Meanwhile, the cable lines, through which much of broadband access is possible, are owned by the same companies that, in the case of AOL Time Warner, also control the bulk of online services. The reach of intellectual property law that rightly protects creators of software and content, he says, has expanded to a point where "copyright control is out of control."
The Stanford Law School professor takes pains to assure us that he is not a "rampant leftist," that he is "not against copyright law," and that "not all resources can or should be organized in a commons." His considered analysis of the complex issues at stake, the nature of new technologies, and the history of communications law is appropriately exhaustive. Yet he doesn't shy away from polemic jibes: He likens both the established and the newly established media titans to "old Soviets" trying to hold on to their power.
Lessig makes an appeal for common sense: "While one cannot say in the abstract that increased control is a mistake, it is clear that we are expanding this control with no sense of what is lost." But common sense may not be enough. Ideas that might help change things, such as some designated chunks of free spectrum, the creation of public broadband infrastructure, governmental encouragement of neutral platforms, and more reasonable limits on intellectual property protection, he says, require "a commitment that I am skeptical our politicians are capable of giving."
Random House: www.randomhouse.com.
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