This books is now free and available under the creative commons license. You can find it as a downloadable PDF online. Search google for it.

Deep understanding on what is going on with intelectual property that we don't see on the newspapers

The author has great insight in the area of intellectual property and how it has an impact in future innovation.

The book is written in a very complex style -- especially the sections where Lessig goes into the nitty gritty of the architecture behind the Internet -- but the book is a wonderful read, especially for those who come from the mindset that copyright laws should serve to give full control to the creator. While Lessig's style is unnecessarily complex, the book is ultimately worth the effort -- especially for Internet enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who need to understand the implications of copyright laws and how they affect culture and future ideas.

This is the best of Lessig's books that I've read so far. Lessig is one of the more articulate spokespersons for the movement to protect the public domain, which includes such groups as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, etc., although he may be more moderate in his views than some.

In this book, Lessig does a great job explaining why the Internet became what it is (or at least what it was in 1999 or 2000). Ultimately the success of the Internet resulted from the fact that no one was in control... But his most important message is that corporate interests don't necessary like what it is, and are using their considerable powers to change it into something more useful to them. This isn't because these companies are evil - their approach is completely rational and legitimate. However, their interests and the interests of the public probably don't coincide here.

The only way to ensure that future control and/or regulation properly balances public and corporate interests is to have an informed public. Professor Lessig's book is a great start.

This is the best of Lessig's books that I've read so far. Lessig is one of the more articulate spokespersons for the movement to protect the public domain, which includes such groups as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, etc., although he may be more moderate in his views than some.

In this book, Lessig does a great job explaining why the Internet became what it is (or at least what it was in 1999 or 2000). Ultimately the success of the Internet resulted from the fact that no one was in control... But his most important message is that corporate interests don't necessary like what it is, and are using their considerable powers to change it into something more useful to them. This isn't because these companies are evil - their approach is completely rational and legitimate. However, their interests and the interests of the public probably don't coincide here.

The only way to ensure that future control and/or regulation properly balances public and corporate interests is to have an informed public. Professor Lessig's book is a great start.

Ultimately, the flaw in Lessig's books is his belief that the revolution of personal computing and the internet are the products of intellectuals like himself. Undermining the freedom and property rights of the programmers and companies who really invented these marvels is a profound threat to one of America's most vital and creative industries.

Rather than just looking at what the intellectual property law is today, he does an excellent job of framing what all of the different types of intellectual property are, how they were intended to be protected (or not!) by the framers of the Constitution, and where we've strayed since then. He provides a very interesting and compelling argument that much of the direction we're headed in today is being forced by corporations who really should be doing that sort of thing -- it's in their charter! However, he points out that it's the responsibility of the people and the government to take actions to ensure a level playing field where people can still make major, field-shattering innovations. It's a great argument, and one that I highly recommend reading through and thinking hard about.

Unfortunately, he doesn't talk much about what kinds of innovation DO happen in the current model (in the large), and how it contrasts with the kinds of innovation that happen in the other model (in the small) that he wants to try to enforce. The implication is that it's as little as possible while maintaining status quo, but that seems hard to believe. Maybe I'm just overly optimistic.

Rather than just looking at what the intellectual property law is today, he does an excellent job of framing what all of the different types of intellectual property are, how they were intended to be protected (or not!) by the framers of the Constitution, and where we've strayed since then. He provides a very interesting and compelling argument that much of the direction we're headed in today is being forced by corporations who really should be doing that sort of thing -- it's in their charter! However, he points out that it's the responsibility of the people and the government to take actions to ensure a level playing field where people can still make major, field-shattering innovations. It's a great argument, and one that I highly recommend reading through and thinking hard about.

Unfortunately, he doesn't talk much about what kinds of innovation DO happen in the current model (in the large), and how it contrasts with the kinds of innovation that happen in the other model (in the small) that he wants to try to enforce. The implication is that it's as little as possible while maintaining status quo, but that seems hard to believe. Maybe I'm just overly optimistic.

Lessig explains himself well in this book, and one can sense his presence as he argues a case in the Supreme Court, or explains a subtle point to a classroom, at Harvard previously but now Stanford. He breaks important new ground in this highly readable effort, crucial to anybody who uses their brain and verve to come up with new ideas in business, academia or the arts. Most of us have noticed that the Internet has shifted our paradigm, but few have recognized that the "commons" it has created is subject to threat. Furthermore, the Internet paradigm has not infused other aspects of our connected world, such as content, broadband ( cable especially), radio spectrum or even software. Lessig cites the concentration of corporate powers, working in lockstep with governmental counterparts, as the threat in these arenas, and of course, the Internet itself. Lessig successfully takes on a huge landscape of ideas, and paries his way with drama and flourish to a question of vital importance, while furnishing compelling outlines of answers. We finish the book mulling the full answers and next steps. Lessig's book is essential to artists, scientists, technologists, business people, lawyers and philosophers.

I found this book so compelling and thoughtfull, that I'm purchasing a dozen more copies to give out at Christmas. The ideas and vision that Mr. Lessig has will compel you to strongly re-thing your laize-fair stance on copyright laws.

Mr. Lessig clearly lays out the history of what is behind patent law and copyright law and illustrates some very remarkable instances where the old corporations have used it to ensure that new ideas and new innovations are stifled and cut off. We are copyrighting our culture, and soon you will no longer be able to even sneeze without referencing the original author (even if the copyright holder is dead!) I truly wish that Lessig was wrong about his vision of the future, but I fear he is right.

The Future of Ideas is one of the most important books on Internet development and the fate of the commons. Lessig's predictions for the future of Internet are indeed scaring and it is important that there is a debate on in what direction(s) we want the Internet to develop. Lessig's user perspective of the problems regarding the commons of the Net makes this book stand out from other books on the same topic. Lessig's opinions are always underpinned by huge amounts of empirical data. This book deserves to be read and discussed by all those who are interested in Internet development in a broad sense.

Before proceeding to criticise this book, I want to give credit where credit is due. Lawrence Lessig has written a superbly clear and even-handed account of the erosion of the balance at the heart of intellectual property law - between public benefit from creations, and private reward for creators. With a wealth of references and a deft style, he illustrates how regulation of the internet is undermining this crucial balance.

Just as in his previous book, `Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace', Lessig upbraided cyber-libertarians for the lazy assumption that the internet will resist regulation simply by virtue of being the internet, so here he upbraids both sides of the intellectual property debate various for lazy assumptions that have disastrous consequences. Above all, the book is comprehensible to the lay reader while also being invaluable for the legal professional - the collection of references in the endnotes is alone worth the cover price.

Now, on to the flaws. The first and foremost flaw is that Lessig commits precisely the crime he railed against in `Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace' - technological determinism. He fetishises information technology, and ascribes to it vague autonomous powers, even going so far as to distinguish the internet from the `real' world and argue that it has its own `physics'. At one point, he catches himself doing this - after a reference to the `natural state' of cyberspace, he confesses: `I spend many pages in "Code" arguing against just this way of speaking.' But he can't wriggle out of it so easily - his over-dependence upon assumptions about the different nature of cyberspace undermine his (otherwise very good) argument.

A second, related flaw is that Lessig relies for his argument upon too vague a definition of `innovation'. Much of the time, he would do better to refer merely to `creativity' or `the free flow of ideas', which are precious enough in themselves to warrant protection. Inasmuch as Lessig is arguing for a rigorously experimental outlook when it comes to regulation, so that innovation might have the space to flourish, the book makes sense. But the fact is that there is a paucity of innovation today, and a cheapening of what the term `innovation' means, that goes beyond intellectual property disputes. Information technology, in particular, has conspicuously failed to live up to the many claims made for its innovative character. At no point does Lessig confront this fact.

Third, Lessig assumes too much about his readers' opinion of the US Constitution. As it happens, I believe that the Constitution is one of the best legal frameworks for the safeguarding of liberty and creativity that humanity has ever come up with. And Lessig's passion for Constitutional principle is infectious. But I am not American, and merely appealing to the historical origins of a legal principle does not suffice to convince me of the merit of that principle - principles also need to be defended in the abstract. There are many readers outside of the USA (not to mention a few within it) who - unlike myself - have no inbuilt respect for the Constitution, and will dismiss Lessig's argument out of hand rather than giving it a chance.

Fourth, Lessig's presentation could be better. Certain of his presentational choices - using environmentalist metaphors to make his point, using the word `Soviets' as a pejorative shorthand - are guaranteed to unnecessarily annoy portions of his readership. Conversely, despite Lessig's repeated (and correct) assertion that the intellectual property debate isn't about Left vs Right, he goes to unnecessary lengths to justify his argument in the terms of Left and Right. His tortured justifications for arguing against proprietary control often read like `I'm a Republican, get me out of here!'

Fifth and finally, while Lessig praises the creators of the internet for being `driven by humility to a system of non-control', he exhibits a little too much `humility' himself. When he slips in disclaimers like `I'm just a lawyer; I haven't the skill to model this counterfactual', you feel like shaking him by the shoulders and saying `For god's sake man, have the courage of your convictions!'

I've been a little harsh in my criticism, so allow me to reiterate. Whatever its flaws, this is an excellent book, and an important addition to a small but growing genre - [...].

Lawrence Lessing, a Professor of Law at Stanford University authors The Future of Ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world. Mr. Lessing unfolds his views about a variety of historical and technical occurrences, that in his opinion has and will also impact the Internet. He uses two recurring concepts, one of a commons the other of layers to emphasize his (and others) perceived notion that the relative openness of the Internet is declining and that the resulting effects could hinder or prevent Internet related innovation. At first glance, the term "commons" appears to be an awkward term to use in the same breath when talking about the Internet. In The Future of Ideas, something or someplace is considered in the commons when using it or accessing it is done without the requirement of another's permission. Layers, is Yochai Benkler's communication system model, where a physical layer (network of fiber optic cable), logical or code layer (the thing that grants access or makes access possible), and content layer (the material transported) segments the communications systems into structures that are pragmatic or in real space. The model makes discussion of telecommunications systems easily comprehensible.
Mr. Lessing divided his book into three sections, the first focuses on the Commons, the second describes the relationship of constraints of creativity to the physical, logical, and content layers, the third discusses regulation; balancing control over the range of products/services known as the Internet realm. In this third section, an interweaving of the prior two sections facilitates illustration of the impacts on real space. Overall, the book was enjoyable and the method Mr. Lessing used to develop his themes was effective. One would have to read his masterfully written book to reap the benefits. A summary and review of a few pages long does not closely describe the valuable information provided and insights of Mr. Lessing. In attempting to provide a summary review of the The Future of Ideas I will compress some highlights into a few paragraphs and hopefully give a respectable hint of Mr. Lessing's use of examples to express his views.
First off, to illustrate the commons and its effect on promoting innovation an account of the World Wide Web (WWW) was given. There were several factors that influenced Tim Berners Lee design for the WWW. One of these was that CERN (the European Scientific Organization) computers could not communicate with each other easily. Other factors were that Berners Lee did not want the WWW to have no centralized point of control to be a bottleneck that restricted the growth of the WWW. Luckily, there were two instrumental occurrences for the WWW, one was that there was going to be a charge for use of a competing network protocol called Gopher. The other was that CERN released to right to the Web to the public domain where anyone could build upon it. Today, hypertext markup language (HTML) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) is open to the public. The WWW design was made possible by the Internets' architecture. The protocols to send retrieve hypertext were open and were not easy to discriminate upon (however, this openness is proving to be a thing of the past).
The second section of The of Future Ideas starts off by discussing artistic creativity and the effects of control on it. Mr. Lessing describes instances where constraints can limit creativity and he also stresses that there is an underlying necessity for a balance on control. There are incentives that motivate individuals to create but absolute control can stifle future growth. One can still reap some rewards by creating new content while still making it available for others to build their ideas onto. Mr. Lessing emphasized this by summarizing the MP3, HTML Books, Films, and Napster cases.
In the third section, Mr. Lessing incorporates the examples already given about AT&T, the FCC, copyright, media, and music to discuss control of at each layer. The comparison of real world regulation on AT&T to the regulation of the cable industry emphasized some inconsistency in the existing laws. The cable industry is positioned (key leaders to lobby policy makers) to influence regulators and it appears to effectively minimize increased regulation similar to those placed upon the telephone industry (AT&T). Moreover, technology has improved to a point where there are businesses designed to monitor usage of content. When new businesses arises by using existing content the owners of that content rush to stop it. This is understandable considering that businesses are obligated to shareholders to make a profit and a good way to ensure continual profits is to maintain a competitive edge. However, Mr. Lessing points out that the companies although lawfully justified by law to stop the use of their material are selectively choosing when to block usage. As you might guess, it is usually done when there is the potential for birth of new competition, but when it occurs in a promotional capacity the usage is allowed or overlooked.

This is a definitive work in the area of copyright disputes in a digital era. It is a great demonstration how corporate america interests have distorted the democratic society and how as a culture our rules our laws and our code frequently are biased to corporate profit over humans and life itself. The book demonstrates how this leads to absurd results that in the end, instead of creating an incentive for intellectual work in fact curtail the discourse. HOWEVER, Lessig relies far too much on his research assistants and it is at times transparent. Some chapters read as if they were written by entirely different people. Chapters contradict themselves saying at one place that the FCC MUST step up and solve the open access debate and in another that the FCC is the problem and should get out of the way. Some chapters clearly rely on only a few primary sources and do not reflect the full policy dialogue. In some areas the thought is clearly well developed and mature, and in others, such as communications law, the work is simply inadequate.

Market economies work. Command economies don't. The collapse of the old USSR put the seal of history on that simple truth. The cold war is over, and the good guys won.

We are already in the middle of the next war, and Lawrence Lessig is warning us (though he doesn't use exactly these terms) that the good guys are losing badly. We're losing because our entire legislative and judicial apparatus is too busy fighting the last war to notice the new one. The great issue for the 20th century was drawn along classic liberal/conservative lines: should allocation of scarce resources be placed under the control of government or of the market? The great issue for the 21st is: should abundant resources, which have traditionally been allocated to everyone, remain free from control - or should they be placed under the control of "the market"? [The scare quotes are mine, not Lessig's, since he places little emphasis on the fact that the entities gaining control are often not really the market at all, but a handful of corporations with enough monopolistic power to avoid effective market discipline.]

The advocates of control against freedom have effectively coopted the *language* of conservatism - "property" and "market" - in order to obscure that the issue is no longer one of government control versus market control, but of control versus freedom. A fair number of conservatives, like Judge Posner and Orrin Hatch, have seen through this ploy, but not enough to form any critical mass.

Lessig explores the historical and legal issues brilliantly, always with a view to the question: what mix of corporate controls and personal freedom will maximize creativity and innovation? He examines how the original architecture of the Internet, and the original establishment of copyright and patent law, enforced a level playing field and encouraged innovation. Then, point for point, he exhibits the ways in which lobbies for entrenched industries, fearful of innovation, have gone about dismantling those encouragements.

He doesn't see those industries as "evil". They are doing just what they are morally obliged to do - trying to maximize profits for their investors. The problem is the absence of any other voices speaking with equal volume for the public interest. The body of Internet and intellectual property law which has emerged over the last decade or so is almost universally designed to defend the old, and to restrain the new. And it is the interests of "old" vs "new", of "controlled" vs "free", rather than of "government" vs "market", which are now at stake. If this revolutionary expansion of intellectual property rights and equally revolutionary concentration of power over media and communications are allowed to lock in, we stand in danger of losing our dynamism as a society.

Lessig offers no shortage of recommendations for future action to preserve our intellectual commons, and open up the field again for innovation. Again and again he thinks well outside the box, seeking balance, crafting proposals that combine the strengths of market and commons. Not all his ideas are going to pan out - but his most important idea is simply that we as a society need to *start thinking* about whether innovation is worth preserving, and how to preserve it. And we need to start thinking fast.

There's a lot to absorb in the volume's few pages. To get a broader picture of the tenor of Lessig's ideas, I strongly recommend the earlier reviews by David Rogers and Alex Pang.

Lessig does a very good idea describing how we are radically shifting how ideas are controlled. His previous book, Code, was a little more abstract, but is a good introduction for this book. In Code he explained that although we think the internet is all about freedom it need not always be that way. In this book he specifically shows how technology is being used to provide owners of intellectual property GREATER control over how their work is used. Today we accept that we can go to a library and get a book for free or borrow a copy of book from a friend. However, music companies (one of many examples) are working technology so that every listening of a song (in electronic form) could be tracted (and presumably charge for). With the current debates about internet radio charging, embedding of anti-piracy technology in all PCs, allowing music companies to plant viruses to punish file-sharers this book could not be more timely (well maybe it could have come out a little earlier). I don't agree with all of Lessig's opinions, but I did agree with his overall premise that we are in the middle of vast shift of how intellectual property is controlled and it requires more thought than we are giving it today.

Professor Lessig of the Stanford Law School has written a brilliant and critically important book for all those interested in the future of innovation, not just on the Internet but also in computer software, technology in general, and indeed in the whole of our intellectual environment.

Lessig is correctly pessimistic about a recent onslaught of legislation and court decisions designed to unduly protect and enhance the power and control of a handful of dominant players (e.g. Microsoft, AOL, AT&T, Hollywood and other media conglomerates) that have occurred 'under the radar' of general public awareness. Unless the public wakes up soon, we stand to lose a great deal of the promise and innovation of the digital revolution.

I won't repeat what has been exceptionally well said by other reviewers of this book below (e.g. David E. Rogers, Robert Steele, Alex Pang, Stephen Laniel, and Ron Dwyer).

Read the book and then write your Congressman!

It will be nice when gas bags such as Lessig are finally measured for the value they have brought us as a society.
The NASDAQ/Dot.com go-go days of the late 90's are dead -and we are better off for it. The hyper-hyperbole driven "economy" where value was temporarily lost under the sofa cushions should be a wakeup call to all of those who think that the next brilliant idea will come from some clown in a loft in the Bay Area or some other hip place - selling dog food online, discussing the owning of their "space," setting out a new "value proposition" and all of the rest of the babble that went on far too long.

Mr. Lessig, could you super-size that for me, and I'm in a hurry.

I struggled with this book, in part because I really dislike the manner in which the law has been complicated to the point of unreason--beyond the ken of normal people. Having concluded the book, however, I have to say this is really worth the effort. The author is laying bare the raw threats to the future of the electronic commons. He discusses in detail how very specific government policies to sell and control bandwidth, and very specific corporate legal claims being backed by "the people's" lawyers within government, are essentially "fencing" the Internet commons and severely constraining both the rights of the people and the prospects for the future of ideas and innovation.

I am not a lawyer and I cannot speak to the points of law, but I am a voter and I can speak to that; what is happening to the Internet through legal machinations that are largely invisible to the people is a travesty, a crime against humanity even if permissible by law, and perhaps grounds for a public uprising demanding the recall of any official that permits and perpetuates the theft of the commons by corporations and their lawyers.

In the aftermath of 9-11, when our secret national intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities failed us, there is a need for a restoration of the people's intelligence in the aggregate as our first line of defense against enemies both foreign and domestic. I regard this book as a very serious, thoughtful, and well-intentioned "public intelligence estimate" and warning, of the harm to our security and prosperity that will ensue from a legal system that is now "out of control" and not being audited by the common sense of the people.

This book makes it clear that if the people are inert and inattentive, they will be enslaved, "virtually speaking." If you thought Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky was scarcy, or Norman Cousins' The Pathology of Power, then this book is for you.

Along with Internet standards acceptable to the people, we now appear to need a public advocacy group, funded by the people, to fight these corporate lawyers at every turn, whilst helping our less than stellar government lawyers cope....

I well remember when I first entered the Internet. Even in those days of Gopher and early versions of Mosaic, I found an exciting and brand-new world, ripe with incredible possibilities. It was a world of free expression, rapid access to vast storehouses of information, instant contact with anyone who had the resources to connect.

But a dark thought always lurked in the recesses of my mind: What will happen when "Big Money" wakes up to the power of the Web? I luridly imagined mega-corporations somehow buying up the Web, tying up content, and crying up to Big Brother when they didn't get their way.

Those days seem to be closer than I ever imagined.

That's what I learned in this intricately arresting book by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. It's an exultant yet sobering look at how the nature of the Internet sparked a new age of innovation--and how this is now seriously threatened. As Lessig writes:

"The original Net protected fundamental aspects of innovation. End-to-end meant new ideas were protected; open code meant innovation would not be attacked; free distribution meant new ways of connecting would be assured. These protections were largely architectural. This architecture is now changing. And as it changes, as with the threats to liberty, there is a threat here to innovation."

Lessig's purpose is awaken us to our untested belief in the value of control over commons before the Net is swallowed up.

The Future of Ideas is nicely structured to that end--but you'll need to strap on your thinking cap before you dive in. Lessig is unrelentingly brilliant and his text is richly loaded with concepts you may never have considered

He begins by introducting the concept of "commons"--most simply defined as a resource held freely in common for the overall good of society. He helps us understand that concept by repeatedly referring to the public roads and highways--they are held in common, we have free access to them, they bring value where they exist.

He then takes this idea of commons and beautifully demonstrates how the Internet rapidly emerged as a new commons for innovation. Against the historical backdrop of controlled innovation that he calls the "dark ages" (well typified by AT&T's former stranglehold over U.S. telecommunications), Lessig shows us how the Web provides a gloriously free field for innovation and ideas--something undeniable in light of its impact over the last several years.

He then explains--in what I found by far the most interesting part of the book--how the nature of the Internet itself, at its physical, code and content layers, created, enabled and empowered this new commons of innovation. I learned things I'd never known about the Net and felt that familiar leap of heart at what the Web could bring.

The book then takes a dark turn as Lessig explains how each layer of the Net is falling under systems of control--systems that threaten to take away the values, norms and architecture of the Net that make it such a free field for innovation. Behind this are the usual culprits--mega-corporations aided and abetted by politicians and the courts. The result is that the commons of the Net is seriously threatened.

But that's only part of the tale Lessig tells. He explains:

"The larger story here is not about dark forces. It is about a blindness that affects our political culture generally. We have been so captured by the ideals of property and control that we don't even see the benefits from resources not perfectly controlled.... This is not a conspiracy. It is a cultural blindness."

In short, it's a story about us, We the People, who are unquestioningly letting Big Money and Big Government erode the freedoms and commons of the Net.

Lessig concludes with some practical, common-sense and challenging recommendations to stop the growing avalanche. Yet the final chapter is chilling, Lessig's closing even more so:

"We move through this moment of an architecture of innovation to, once again, embrace an architecture of control--without noticing, without resistance, without so much as a question. Those threatened by this technology of freedom have learned how to turn the technology off. The switch is now being thrown. We are doing nothing about it."

Want to do something about it? You can begin by reading this book.

As a follow on to Code which I did very much enjoy, I was very anxious to read this book. Sadly, however in Lessig's zeal to advance his theories of control working against innovation he strays from the path of logic time and again in an effort to sway the lay reader. It seems that the argument while interesting in the abstract, fails when real facts are required to advance the premise.

For instance - he posits without any support that patent rights are no more or less property rights than are welfare grants. He says that the gov't "grants" these rights to promote the public good - which is in part correct however - the govt "secures" (Art. 1 sec. 8 cl. 8 of the US constitution says the gov't "secures" for authors and inventors the rights to their IP) these rights in the same way it secures your land interest by certifying a deed - and there again it is done for public benefit - your owndership of real and intellectual property are in essence the same fiction of govt to promote the public good - and Lessig knows this well. These do not compare well to the grant of welfare which while serving the public good does not contemplate a property interest on behalf of the recipient. His premise is simply absurd.

At another point Lessig likens defenders of current IP systems to the Soviets of the failed USSR (clearly the irony and pure chutzpah here can't be lost on the reader - while I appluad the gall I cannot agree with the point).

His comparison of the Comm Decency Act vs. copyrights on the Web is again a clear indication of his distortion of facts to support his agenda - on the one hand the CDA (meant to protect minors from online smut) was struck down as inhibiting free speech -Lessig (himself a constitutional expert) wonders why such scrutiny was not applied to the protection of copyrights vs. the ideal of a better web? The issue here is simple and he knows the anwer: the CDA requires under law scrict scrutiny as it impinges on a constitutional right (free speech) whereas the copyright issue does not -

Lessig's zeal to advance his intriguing theories from Code has him distorting reality to "prove" his points leading the careful reader to wonder about the "house of cards nature" of his premise.

I really expected much more from him and was very disppointed by this book notwithstanding the very interesting premise.

[This draws on my review of "The Future of Ideas" published in the Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2002.]

A century ago, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered an address on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" that changed the way America understood itself. Turner cast the frontier's history in a new light, making it a driver of national history and culture and its closing a cause for alarm. Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" could have been titled "The Significance of the Electronic Frontier in American History." Lessig sees the Internet as harboring a unique character that accounts for its importance and for which it is under attack. Like Turner's "frontier thesis," "The Future of Ideas" is a dazzlingly inventive work about familiar things. It deserves to change the way we think about the electronic frontier.

In Lessig's world, established corporations use any means to keep challengers down, including rewriting the rules and even outlawing disruptive innovation. He is decidedly NOT anti-capitalist, nor is he a Marxist, as another review assumes. Lessig loves the "creative destruction" that the Internet has spawned, and indeed sees the Internet as a realm where the right to innovate (the term Microsoft used to brand its defense in the federal antitrust suit) has been built-in, much as constitutional rights are guaranteed to citizens. (Lessig clerked for famed University of Chicago professor and circuit judge Richard Posner, and for Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, neither of whom is known for his Marxist leanings.)

It isn't obvious that the Internet should have become such a hotbed of creativity. For years, the phone system was far more attractive than the Internet to hackers like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. So why did the Internet become an arena for innovation in the 1990s? Not because it attracted venture capitalists and twentysomething CEOs who "got it," but because it is a "commons." Commons are things available to anyone who obeys the rules governing their use. Streets, highways and parks are commons open to everyone. The Internet's fundamental design was built around a common protocol that all computers could use, and it was designed so that the intelligence resided at the edges of the network, not in the center. This "end-to-end" architecture is the reverse of the telephone system, in which dumb devices--your phone--are connected by an intelligent network. Add the development of open source software and you have a commons of extraordinary value. Anyone who obeys the technical rules can develop services that run on it. No application can be excluded for political reasons or protectionism. Success is bestowed by the marketplace, not by government policy or corporate patronage. The phone system couldn't compete, not despite its centralized power, but because of it. To paraphrase Stewart Brand, innovation wants to be free.

But the Internet is endangered, Lessig says. The shift from an Internet running off telecom to broadband running through cable television wires threatens the open architecture because a cable company can design its system to work best with its own service provider, deny access to competitors or break software from other companies, and it will all be legal; no phone company could have ever done those things. Changes in copyright and patent law are also impoverishing the intellectual commons. Copyright originally lasted 14 years; today it can last 10 times as long, thanks to efforts by entertainment companies eager to defend their profits. Patent applicants have to reveal how their inventions work, but you can patent software without revealing the source code that would make it comprehensible to others, and the "fair use" of copyrighted materials is under attack as publishers develop technology to gain more control over content.

"The Future of Ideas" concludes with proposals to defend the digital commons. Given that we live in a world in which intellectual work is being fenced off and sold, do his ideas stand a chance? Lessig is pessimistic, but the last 20 years have seen some remarkable experiments in public policy inspired by iconoclastic thinkers: think of emissions trading and spectrum auctions. His ideas could provide a foundation for real action. Recent polls suggest that respect for the government and public services is rising, and few politicians would say they were against innovation and for special interests. It might be impossible to recover America's original great commons, the first frontier, but perhaps the electronic one still has a chance.

The Future Of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig established his credentials as a civil libertarian and Internet advocate a few years ago with _Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace_, his brilliant and vastly important work about the world of complete control toward which the Internet is converging. _Code_ was a highly pessimistic portrayal of the legal and corporate infrastructure that would eventually lead the Internet - in Lessig's view - to be a masterpiece of control more evil than George Orwell ever could have imagined.

Lessig's argument in _Code_ was manifold, but one of its most important points was that we miss the real bad guys if we focus all our attention on removing government regulation from the Internet. Control can come from many directions: corporations can control us, social norms can, and so can the government. From the Founding Fathers until now, we have focused all our energy on weakening the government, while beefing up the private sector. In _Code_, Lessig showed us that the chickens are coming to roost: we're careening toward a thoroughly controlled world in which corporations will be able to know everything about us, because we have placed our entire personas inside a world that is as malleable as computer code.

There is no ``nature" of cyberspace, said Lessig in _Code_: the Internet is nothing more or less than the code that controls it. The Net is not ``by its very nature" unregulable, because it has no nature - it merely has code. In fact, Lessig goes on to show that we can expect a world of more regulation, not less, as the Net becomes more and more dominated by commerce.

In The Future Of Ideas, Lessig focuses his energy on a different, but nonetheless still very important aspect of the Internet's development: the Old Guard's habit of constraining innovation. The point has been made before in varied contexts related to the Net. Jessica Litman's book Digital Copyright argued that copyright holders tend to stomp on new technologies because the latter normally don't have powerful interests behind them and the former do. (E.g., the Betamax copyright-infringement case in the 1980's.) Lessig goes further, showing that in many different cases (copyright-related and otherwise) the Old Guard have restricted innovation to the point that the Internet of the future will be just like every old technology. We'll get television all over again.

Lessig starts with his ideal, which many civil libertarians and hackers share: an Internet of totally open-source software and end-to-end (e2e) network design. Throughout the book, he shows why corporations - behaving, from their perspective, in a totally honest and right-headed way - are straying from that ideal into a world of more copyright restrictions, less openness, and more control. In many ways, this book is a continuation of _Code_, this time focusing on specific aspects of the future that Lessig foresaw in the earlier work. As with _Code_, _The Future Of Ideas_ is pessimistic, stating in strong terms that it expects nightmarish visions of the future to come true.

Much of the ground that Lessig covers here has been dealt with in greater detail elsewhere. For instance, Litman's book Digital Copyright is a great introduction both to the history of copyright and to its future. But few books tackle the expanse of material that _The Future Of Ideas_ discusses. Lessig covers everything from spectrum auctions to content licensing to patents to trademarks to copyrights, all while keeping his eye on the general notion that the laws have moved quickly out of our hands. As Litman pointed out in Digital Copyright, and as Lessig reiterates here, the few people who understand copyright law are all copyright lawyers. Those who must live in the law's shadow - ordinary citizens - have no idea what copyright law says, and when presented with incoherent copyright law, their first instinct is to say, ``It couldn't possibly say what you say it says." The law has moved past the point where citizens could control it.

While he's at it, Lessig manages to keep his head about him. He clearly has a well-formed opinion on the topics he covers, yet he manages to structure the book as a series of questions. Lessig suggests that a society is defined by the questions it doesn't ask - the ones it takes for granted. So during his analysis of electronic-law issues, he tries to get us to question things that we've forgotten were even questions to begin with - questions like whether more control is always better, whether more privatization of resources is always a good idea, and so on. And throughout his discussion, he manages to keep the discussion coherent: he has a few guiding themes, and his discussions of electronic law keep returning to those themes.

The result is a remarkably readable book that should worry anyone who has an interest in the future of the electronic world. Little of the material in _The Future Of Ideas_ will be new to Slashdot readers, but there is probably no single book that ties this issues together as well as this one does. The overall evil that it reveals is worth paying attention to.

Professor Lessig takes a very complex area, how should we value intellectual property in the internet, in publishing and copyright, in bandwidth and in a number of parallel areas, and presents a clear and thoughtful discussion of the consequences of alternative approaches.

What will happen to the, as he calls it, information commons, if we continue on the path we have adopted in the last few years on copyright law? What are the benefits and costs of open source and free code movements in the development of software? What are the possible alternatives to distribute bandwidth - from radio frequencies to the internet? Those are some of the issues presented in this book. All of it in an informative and interesting style.

This is not a polemic - as some treatments of intellectual property are - but rather a strong case for the efficacy of market based solutions that will offer us both more alternatives and a vibrant set of choices.

The only defect I could find in the book was the need to constantly jot down notes - ideas pop out of this book.

Greedy corporations are taking over the world, capitalists steal from the little guy, (intellectual) property rights are coercion, ideas belong to the masses. Sound familiar?

It should. We've been hearing the same tired message from Karl Marx's intellectual brethren for over a century. Undeterred by enormous increases in the length and quality of living in nations recognizing (intellectual) property rights, the Lawrence Lessigs of the world are still struggling to wipe-out, roll-back, compromise, or otherwise water-down the right to (intellectual) property.

The programmer's right to his code, the musician's right to his melodies, the chemist's right to his formula, and the businessman's right to his trademark are just as absolute--and just as necessary-- as the farmer's right to his wheat and the miner's right to his coal. In fact, it is intellectual property rights, which guarantee a man's right to his *intellectual* products, that have allowed men to climb out of mines and support themselves through *intellectual* effort.

Contrary to Lessig's premise, strong patent and copyright protection is even *more vital* in the new digital world. As an increasing amount of wealth is intellectual--such as movies, music, software, paintings, drugs, and web sites--the rights of the producers to keep, trade, license, and dispose of their intellectual creations is crucial: Practically, in order to make intellectual effort a means of earning a living. Morally, in recognition of their productive efforts.

For more of the same theories you've heard in books, newspapers, and movies for years, read this book.

For a fresh explanation of the moral and practical necessity of intellectual property rights, read "Patents & Copyrights" in Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal"

Extraordinary book. A warning to the world, which looks strongly and deeply at the connection between the organization of the Internet and the possibilities of innovation and freedom.
Lessig's focus is developing new applications and content, which happens because of the creators at one end of the net can deliver directly to their audience at the other end. This is threatened by companies like TW and Pac Bell in the middle, who want to become gatekeepers along the way, choosing which movies, games, or Internet sites can be effectively carried.

This book should be at least a candidate for the National Book Award. It is, I believe, an important book for our time. The author, Lawrence Lessig, according to the book's jacket, is a professor of law at the Stanford Law School; once a clerk for Judge Richard Posner; and is a board member of the Red Hat Center for Open Source, among other things. So he has the knowledge, experience, and judgment to write such a book.
What is the main concern of the book? Let me try to put it in this fundamental way: How do we want the Internet to develop? How do we create the conditions necessary to maximize the creative potential of the Internet and, for that matter, any new electronic technology?
These concerns leads us to the consider the laws that we have now--especially the patent and copyright laws, and perhaps to a lesser extent, the anti-trust laws.
I am familiar with some theoreticians who hold that there should not be any patent and copyrights at all. This is one extreme view, which the author does not hold. I believe that there has to be adequate reward to the innovator, and copyright and patents--which indeed does grant a limited monopoly--does that.
However, the author argues that the current laws that we have today go too far in the other extreme. These laws he argues hinder future creativeness. The laws we have today, he says, will lead to a future where "take the Net, mix it with the fanciest TV, add a simple way to buy things and that's pretty much it." (page 7) But the future can be better and greater than this, in ways we cannot fathom now.
It seems to me that concerning copyrights and patents, a utilitarian standard should apply: Pursue the policy that maximizes wealth in society as a whole. Granting patents and copyrights does that--for in the very fact of doing that--it gives a signal to members of society that innovation will be rewarded. However, perhaps the length of these copyrights and patents are too long.
After a patent expires, others copy or modify the original product--as can be seen in the case of prescription drugs--which thus increases the supply of such a good, and thus lowers its price. Consumers benefit.
Reducing copyright and patent protection would not only have this immediate economic beneit to consumers, but it would have the long-term impact of promoting creativity.
The author, argues, for example, that, concerning computer software, he would "protect software for only five years, renewable once. But that protection would be granted only if the author submitted a copy of the source code to be held in escrow while the work was protected. Once the copyright expired, that escrowed copy would be publicly available from the US Copyright Office server." (page 253)
Ideas like this are anathema to some companies. But if we had such a policy in place, I can readily imagine a reality where there would be less market dominanace by a few companies, and the innovation rate of software would have been better.
Of course, as with any author, one can disagree here and there. The author seems to side with Napster, for instance. I do think that the courts ruled correctly in that case. As the saying goes, "If you don't like the law, you take it to your congressman." Or to the reading public, who hopefully will influence public policy.

Nothing short of a best seller, this book will certainly become as popular as "Code and other Laws of Cyberspace".

This time, Pr Lessig takes us on a tour of the world of intellectual property law and cyberspace. With great strength, the book induces a profound reflection on what intellectual property should and should not be. One of the major arguments developed throughout the book is that some resources should be free (not as in free beer, but as in free speech) and that such "freedom" is the only way to have innovation. The main example of this theory: the Internet. Build on open code and with open access, the Internet is the perfect example of how the freedom of the resource induces creativity on a large scale. This creativity boom is now threatened by the extension of copyright into the digital world.

Attacking strongly what copyright and intellectual property law has become, the author points out that the content industry has, in an effort to protect it's market, defined what we could and what we will be able to do with "our" music.

For the copyright lawyers, this book will be an occasion to think about the effects our practice has on everyone's life and liberty. Pr Lessig is right. Several new copyright legislation go to far and procure a level of control over content and use that was never meant to exist.

For the non-lawyer, the book is accessible and well written. Pr Lessig makes his case by storytelling and by numerous examples, which should allow a large public to appreciate and understand the nature of the fight between content user and content producer.

Get this book ... it's worth every minute of your time !