The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

Lawrence Lessig

Random House, 2001 - Law - 352 pages

The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone. What was responsible for its birth? Who is responsible for its demise? InThe Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet's very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and informationthe ideas of our eracould flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changingboth legally and technically. This shift will destroy the opportunities for creativity and innovation that the Internet originally engendered. The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future. Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed. Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights. The choice Lawrence Lessig presents is not between progress and the status quo. It is between progress and a new Dark Ages, in which our capacity to create is confined by an architecture of control and a society more perfectly monitored and filtered than any before in history. Important avenues of thought and free expression will increasingly be closed off. The door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology makes an extraordinary future possible. With an uncanny blend of knowledge, insight, and eloquence, Lawrence Lessig has written a profoundly important guide to the care and feeding of innovation in a connected world. Whether it proves to be a road map or an elegy is up to us.

What people are saying

Review: The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

User Review  - Pete - Goodreads

Fascinating examination of what makes the internet tick, in terms of innovation, and what kinds of things could stop that innovation. He sets forth the idea that there are three layers in the internet ...

Review: The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

User Review  - Oliver - Goodreads

Lessig has...certainly got a lot more constructive and eloquent than he was back in '01

Contents

• Free 3: xl
• DOT COMMONS: 17
• Innovation from the Internet 120: 20

About the author

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School and the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. The author of "The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace," he is the chair of the Creative Commons project (www.creativecommons.org). A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School, he has clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World; The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
• Author: Lawrence Lessig
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Random House, 2001
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Nov 8, 2007
• ISBN: 0375505784, 9780375505782
• Length: 352 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / E-Commerce / General; Computers / Information Technology; Computers / Internet / General; Computers / Social Aspects / General; Law / Computer & Internet; Law / Intellectual Property / Copyright; Law / Intellectual Property / General