The Future of Ideas 170
| The Future of Ideas | |
| author | Lawrence Lessig |
| pages | 352 |
| publisher | Random House |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Michael Sims |
| ISBN | 0-375-50578-4 |
| summary | Suppressive efforts by entrenched industries threaten innovation in cyberspace |
Ideas has been reviewed in Salon and in the Washington Monthly; the book has a promotional website as well.
Lessig starts off by looking at the idea of a "commons," a community resource of some sort. The traditional commons is a public park or piece of land, but Lessig is more interested in looking at less-traditional commons on the 'Net and other communications systems. He moves on to examining some of the innovations that have been spurred by the recent growth of the Net -- typically startup companies that have taken advantage of the commons represented by TCP/IP and HTTP to provide a new service or product. If you follow Slashdot religiously, you probably read about most of these companies at least twice -- once when they started offering their innovative new whizbang, and again when they were sued by Megacorp, Inc., and shut down. The final part of Ideas covers the lawsuits, or more precisely the efforts by entrenched players to keep anyone else from playing. The distinction is important, because lawsuits are not the only way to keep upstarts from being able to participate: control of the code is also an important tool. For every control through lawsuits story that Slashdot runs, there's an equivalent story about control through code.
Just as in Code, Lessig is not optimistic about the future. Why should he be? So far, despite every warning, every attempt to sound the alarm, the forces trying to shut down innovation are winning in an utterly convincing fashion. A blurb compares the book to Silent Spring, the famous book about the environmental effects of DDT. Silent Spring was more or less successful -- DDT is now banned for most uses in the U.S., and the book had great effect in raising environmental awareness, but overall, environmental quality has continued to suffer. Lessig's book is not likely to be as successful. Attacking DDT was relatively easy compared to attacking the unlimited expansion of intellectual property, which has many multi-billion dollar companies willing to fight to defend their continued erosion of the public commons.This should suffice to summarize Lessig's book. The ideas in it should not be unfamiliar -- Lessig is hardly the only one espousing this point of view today, though he is one of the most articulate. The final chapters have Lessig's suggestions for ways to reverse this trend of quashing innovation -- different ways of managing the electromagnetic spectrum to produce a better wireless commons (it's worth noting that the unlicensed 2.4 Ghz band has been the source of most recent wireless innovation), ways to create an Internet commons on the wired network (some municipalities are already doing this, laying municipal fiber to the home and following an open access policy), changing copyright law and patent law to put more code in the public domain, changing contract law so that end-users can't be forced to sign away their rights. All are good suggestions. Despite the hopeful notes in parentheses just above, most of these suggestions stand little chance of being adopted any time soon. But perhaps Rachel Carson was looking at much the same uphill battle against DDT.
Ideas is most comparable to The Control Revolution by Andrew Shapiro, an earlier effort to explore the changing dynamics of control on the net. Shapiro was much more optimistic, and writing without much of the recent evidence that Lessig uses to make his point that innovation is being squashed thoroughly. If you will, there is an optimism scale -- John Perry Barlow defines one end of the scale, Shapiro is in the middle, and Lessig occupies the pessimistic side. Smart money is on Lessig.
All in all, it's a fine book. I think I prefer Code though, for a variety of reasons -- I find the central premise of Code to be less obvious, more ground-breaking. Or perhaps I've just read so much about "innovation" during the Microsoft trials that I can never again read the word without wincing. As with Code, Lessig has extensive footnotes, making this a scholarly work (for the scholars) but a perfectly readable book even for non-scholars. In any case, it's strongly recommended.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Read the book review guidelines, then submit using Slashdot's web-submission page :)
More on the subject. (Score:4, Interesting)
Confusing tech knowledge with politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Always bear in mind the other possibility: that they might actually know the facts but honestly disagree with your conclusions. Whatever you and I may think of the DeCSS decisions recently, there is no denying that Kaplan and the appeal court knew and understood the technology and the law that was relevant to the case.
The idea that artists and inventors should be granted limited monopolies on their works is a very old and respectable idea (e.g. the US constitution). It takes a bit more than arm-waving to cast it all aside.
Also, bear in mind that the judges in the DeCSS case have very properly had to defer to Congress except where Congress exceeds its constitutional powers. The system was designed that way for good reason. Believe me, you really don't want judges making up the law as they go along.
I have a lower opinion of Congress as a venue for getting these things right though. For a variety of reasons they get a clearer view of the arguments to increase IPR than to limit them. Most of these come down to a combination of money and the tendency of focussed interests (e.g. 5 movie studios) to over-ride diffuse interests (e.g. 500e6 movie fans). But thats about par for the course. Congress has made some stunningly bad decisions over the past couple of centuries, and will no doubt make more. If you want to improve it, you know what to do.
Paul.
Re:Free vs. Corporate Net? (Score:2, Interesting)
Barriers to Knowledge, and Business Models (Score:3, Interesting)
history parallels, and a new war (Score:3, Interesting)
We can see parallels in history by other institutions that embraced false property rights. How many of you have herd that freeing slaves was stealing, or that there was no incentive to grow cotton without them, or that the great wealth of America's plantations was proof of slavery's justification. Some people think it's unfair to make this compairison to slavery, but I think it is - for example look at what almost happened in Africa, there millions and millions of people risked death because American pharmacuticals wanted to sue over intellectual property rights.
However, we should consider ourselvs fortunate - because unlike our predacessors I think we can win this war without one bit of violence. It will first be done with copyrights where enforceing copy controlls will become nearly impossible without stirring up massive unpopularity, and imposing massive intrusions into millions of corporations and peoples private lives. Eventually something will half to give because we do live in a democracy. It will later come with patents where the ability to create and manufacture will come to the home. In non democratic countries, both of these will pose a serious problem because the government will likely not be as restrained before things really get out of hand.
Other approaches like the GPL, and public encyclopedias will also seriously relieve the pressure. (thank you RMS)
Re:Copywrite (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free vs. Corporate Net? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what do you do? I've also looked at freenet, and I'm not running a server for exactly the same reason you aren't - there's no way I'll donate my hard disk space and bandwidth to a system that people can use for swapping child porn.
But heck, we need something - something where there's a little space, some gaps in the system where people can do innovative stuff, but also where people who do seriously illegal stuff can be tracked down and prosecuted. The ideal medium seems to be a system where tracking people down is difficult enough that no one will bother to do it for friends sharing music.
Personally, my hopes are on "grid" style networking - if a few dozen people in a neighborhood set up wireless LAN access points, wired them all together with some nice routing, and run the whole thing on worthlessly out of date Pentium 200's running Linux... well, there's a network where people can have some fun. In some ways, it would be like the old BBS days before everyone had Internet.
People could put servers on the neighborhood grid, people could connect multiple gateways to the internet, local stores and services could find ways to advertise on it... a local neighborhood chat room could maybe be a useful thing...
And just firewall out the big, boring, commercial, controlled, corporate-sponsor-pop-up-ad-no-servers-allowed-mi
Maybe. Or maybe we are all just doomed, and Internet will turn into TV.
Re:Barriers to Knowledge, and Business Models (Score:4, Interesting)
Why?
The government, nor the people, are responsible for maintaing the viability of business. Others have used the example of buggy-whip manufacterers at the beginning of the 20th century - a doomed business. The Statute of Anne in 1710 was not about keeping the Stationers' Guild in business - it was about changing the way the English looked at literature. No longer was it something owned forever by a single printer; it became something the printer and author could make money from for a limited time, but was destined for a place in the public commons, where anyone could use it without prejudice.
To paraphrase Lessig - from where we stand today we have two choices. 1) we can move forward into a world where everyone can be creative, limited only by a sensible return to original authors or 2) we can move backward into a new dark ages, where a few people control the intellectual wealth and share it only for an ever higher price and ever more restrictive rules of use.
Like Lessig, I can see which way we are moving, and I don't like the view. The technology is nearly here that would allow ordinary people to create animated movies from their own stories, or favorite books. I would like to see people able to share these works, but copyright law, as currently practised, will stand in the way, might even prevent the technology from becoming available to the public.
I believe copyright to be a necessary evil, but it has gone far beyond any sensible limitations. It's time Americans got together and insisted on a change.
Help out - http://www.amfcc.org
http://www.eff.org
"code as law" is not a new idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Putting commons in context (Score:3, Interesting)
The "commons" was originally often found as part of a system in which people were property. At that time, the commons was for the use of those who were bound to the local fiefholder. As more and more autonomy was granted to individuals, this system no longer worked and the commons system morphed into one in which the "owner class" began to seek compensation for the resource in the form of rents or other consideration.
I cannot help but think that Lessig's "intellectual commons" is part of a system in which the ideas that populate them are already bound through other less obvious means to entities such as universities and corporations. The proposition that these ideas be "set free" will lead to exactly the kinds of DCMA shenanigans that Lessig seems to passionately want to avoid??
Is it possible that the concept of an intellectual commons is already becoming an anachronism in the same way that the concept of a common pasture became unusable as the system changed? As our society is driven towards a different notion of property, driven by Disney, RIAA, and other content owners, will fair use of ideas even exist as a tenable mechanism?
Perhaps there will become "free ideas" just as there were "freemen." These ideas would be certified as free, and could be combined with other free ideas... Wait a minute, I've heard this idea before; RMS, where are you when I need an overcharged rant about freedom?
Tragedy of the Commons (Score:3, Interesting)
The 400 lb gorillas of IP are trying to maximise their utility gains from the internet while impacting the utility to others negatively. Good old utilitarianism.
Hardin goes on from there, but it has been a few years since I read the paper so I'm going to breeze through it again. I'm looking forward to picking up this book to see what new thinking it might bring to the analysis.
I'd be interested to hear from Mr. Lessig (as he seems to be posting here) how much his thesis was influenced by Hardin.
message is being ignored (Score:3, Interesting)
in order for his message concerning the future of ideas to be effective it must be received and adopted by the techies. it is only after the techies take up the cause that they are being threaten will his message will have some true meat to it. the people who are the most influence, i.e. congress and courts, are being inundate with anti-lessigism and are blind to the alternative (will we ever see mickey mouse in the public domain? No). the lobbies and the lawyers are drowning out whatever counter arguments exist against the extenuation of copyright controls.
until some of the 'leaders' of the techies take note and start supporting this platform we all will just end up watching our rome burn like nero. eric raymond thinks the message in code and most likely his new book are false. he feels that no matter what happens the techies will be able to adapt, overcome and conquer anything that washington throws at the techies. wired news on aug 29, 2001 says "linus torvalds... wasn't quite so pessimistic. 'a lot of people are wasting time over disagreements,' he said, referring to legendary sectarian squabbles within the open-source community. 'but i think people will get their act together,' torvalds said. ' within the last six months, there has been a lot more (political) activity.'" However as long as Prof Felton isn't publishing, the DCMA is up held and Dmitry Sklyarov is being prosecuted... then there isn't enough support for open source and more must be done.
once the techies, the geeks, the open sourcers and those who are most affected by copyright controls (DMCA), then perhaps the public will take note. without the techies support then the message lessig is telling us is ineffective and the internet will be lost.
there are hundreds of lawyers and millions of dollars against us, why aren't we doing something about it?
Re:No, Kaplan's just doing his job (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone got any suggestions?
Yeah, I'd like to be able to play the DVDs I've legally purchased on my BSD (or insert your favorite OS) box. Reverse engineering has traditionally been a legitimate method for making things work when the original owner of a technology isn't interested in pursuing some particular market or use of the technology.
Re:Putting commons in context (Score:2, Interesting)
You ask for a reason to limit what currently exists, and what seems so promising. What about the simplest of all possible reasons, that is to say social cost and stability? I have personally participated in the serendipity that can occur on the net, but I also am very aware of the hidden costs, risks, and the limited capabilities which caused the dotcom implosion. Does society get enough value out of this commons to justify the significant subsidy being provided? This is an open question in my mind; the historical impact of network technologies has seldom been all good, and these technologies have almost always been imposed by the interested parties in the name of social good.
There is a non-trivial cost to providing a fabric for end to end communication and innovation. This cost must be born by either government or the private sector. My own social liberal leanings cause me to agree with your position, but this doesn't mean that our current social obsession with "free markets" won't cause society as a whole to move towards favoring "markets of ideas," at which point the innovation commons may easily become a useless white elephant, while the Hardin fallacy may become the institutionalized norm.
Isn't this happening now?
Convincing corporate overlords to halt what they see as forward motion will be difficult. I am glad to see you trying to do this, but I am also wondering how the new system, should IP law become "harmonized" and protected by measures such as DMCA, will adapt. Do you have opinions here? This is why I am interested in alternatives to a commons-based approach.
(Thanks to lessig for participating in the /. fray today, by the way!)