The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig, Random House, $30, ISBN
0375505784
IT IS fashionable among those who care about the future of the Internet to
talk about 鈥渢he tragedy of the commons鈥�. The reference is to a 1968 essay by
ecologist Garrett Hardin, which talked about the problem of allocating scarce
resources (the commons) when users acted selfishly rather than cooperatively.
The original essay is about a bunch of farmers, some cows and a bit of grazing
land, but it applies rather well to the clogging that goes on when millions of
people simultaneously try to download, say, the latest 400-page report on the
wrongdoings of a US president.
In The Future of Ideas, the commons is the universe of human ideas.
Lessig contends that, after a decade of rampant innovation, we are sitting
quietly by while the powers that used to be are systematically making good the
ground they lost and closing off access to that commons. Entrenched interests in
the entertainment industry are gaining control of the means of access to the Net
as broadband is rolled out by the cable companies, wireless spectrum is
allocated to the highest bidders, and routeing threatens to cease being
content-neutral. The upshot, Lessig argues, is a future Internet in which your
cable company could favour a selection of its own and its partners鈥� content,
slowing or blocking access to alternatives. Lessig limits his discussion to the
US, but the threat is the same in Britain.
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In a book that is far darker and more pessimistic than Code, Lessig ties into
all this the practice of granting patents, instead of copyright protection, to
software and business methods. This threatens to make it impossible for any but
the largest companies to engage in software development (Europe is reconsidering
its position on this subject). The alternative is open-source software that can
be inspected and tinkered with by anyone who鈥檚 interested. Similarly, the legal
system has been consistently granting rightsholders increased control. Copyright
terms keep being extended: Napster and My.MP3.com have been shut down, and laws
such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are in force. All serve to further
the interests of the now greatly consolidated ranks of a few rightsholders, at
the expense of public access.
Which regime did better at spurring innovation, asks Lessig. The tight
control that AT&T (and BT) exerted over the telephone network until 1984? Or
the open nature of the Internet鈥檚 design?
It is now clearer that the Net will be turned into an oligopoly, like
commercial broadcasting. Rightsholders have been arguing for years that the ease
of copying digital media, if left unregulated, will end innovation and creation.
Who, they ask, will spend their lives making music for the rest of us if there鈥檚
no way for them to get paid?
It鈥檚 the wrong question, and not just because the entertainment industry has
rarely paid artists willingly. Lessig asks a better one: given that the freedoms
that were designed into the Internet鈥檚 architecture spawned a massively creative
commons of ideas, is it wise to make legal and structural changes that will end
those freedoms, just because a few large companies want total control?