The Future of Ideas

What is Property?

• We are in the midst of an unprecedented technological revolution

• Technological change implies cultural change

• Not left versus right• Technological has led to innovation that

has led to unprecedented prosperity• Yet there is confusion regarding a core

concept, namely property

Lessig’s Claim

• Confusion about property is leading us to change the environment for innovation

• Our societal decision-makers are deluded about the causes of prosperity

• This leads to changing the rules that led to the Internet revolution

• This will end the Internet revolution as we know it

Some Abuses of IP Law

• Patenting basmati rice• Pharmaceuticals strategy

regarding drugs whose patent will expire soon

• Smucker’s patent for a pasty • Amazon 1-click

Property

• Relationship between property and democracy• Kant’s definition• One property right is alienation

– “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Declaration of Independence

• The difference between rivalrous and non-rivalrous uses

• Goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable are pure public goods

Innovation and the Meaning of Free

• State control versus market control• Free = gratis, e.g. free beer• Free = libre, e.g. free speech

– Permission not required for use or– Permission granted neutrally

• Lessig’s argument – Free resources are “…crucial to innovation and creativity. Without them, creativity is crippled.”

The Commons

• Resource held in common• Such resources are free, e.g. public

streets, parks, writings, ideas, folk music, dance steps

The Tragedy of the Commons

• Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons– Communities regulate overconsumption that

occurs for rivalrous resources in a commons, e.g. lobster fishing

• Are commons different for rivalrous versus nonrivalrous resources?

• Innovation commons – There is benefit to holding nonrivalrous

goods in an innovation commons

Questions

• What should be held in a commons?– Roads– Parks– Water– Education– Knowledge– Medical care– DNA

• How should this be decided?– Should everything be treated as a

commodity?

Layers within a Communications System (e.g. the Internet)

What can be controlled• Content• Code• Physical

Organizing Layers (examples)

Speakers’Corner

Madison Square Garden

Telephone System

Cable TV

Content Free Free Free Controlled

Code Free Free Controlled

Controlled

Physical Free Controlled

Controlled

Controlled

The Invention of the Internet

• How AT&T invented the Internet with the help of Paul Baran and perhaps Leonard Kleinrock.

• AT&T’s intransigence• Circuit switching versus packet switching• Hardening against nuclear attack• ‘e2e’ design• Who paid for the Internet?

Architecture is Power

• Physical architecture – castle design for example

• Architecture affects human rights – access, speech, privacy

• Architecture affects innovation

E2E Philosophy

“The network’s job is to transmit datagrams as efficiently and flexibly as possible. Everything else should be done at the fringes.”

1) Innovators with new applications need only to connect them to let them run.

2) Because design is not optimized for any application, the network is open to innovation.

3) The network cannot discriminate against an innovator’s new design.

Innovation Commons

• How the e2e principle made the Internet into an innovation commons

• The World Wide Web– Tim Berners-Lee– HTTP and HTML– Released into the public domain

Costs of E2E design

• Congestion, e.g. Internet telephony, audio and video streaming

• Another example – where should Internet security solutions be located, things like virus and spam checks

• QoS solutions – identification and different treatment for different applications

• Effect of QoS on new applications

Wired Culture and Its Commons

• Commons of code– Source code and object code

• Commons of knowledge• Commons of innovation

Unix and Linux

• Bell labs development of Unix• Richard Stallman and “free

software”– GNU (GNU is Not Unix)

• Linus Torvalds– Linux

Open Code Products

• GNU/Linux• Apache• Berkeley Internet Name Domain

(BIND)• Perl

General Public License (GPL)

• GPL permits unrestricted copying, modification, and redistribution (gratis or for a fee). GPL makes source code available.

• GPL requires that any code derived from GPL code provide the same permissions as the original GPL code

Open Source

• Differs from GPL in that derivative products do not have to reveal source code

• Example – Apache is open source so company could produce a proprietary product using Apache

Microsoft and Antitrust

• Predatory behavior with regard to competing products

• Bundling Windows OS, Office Suite, and IE and requiring PC vendors to ship PCs with all of these, i.e. dude, you couldn’t buy a Dell with Linux

IBM

• IBM embraced Apache and discontinued their own server software

• IBM embraced Linux• Why?• The case of SCO and Linux

Manifesto on WIPO (Boyle)

• What is WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)?– Paris agreement– Berne agreement– Establishment of WIPO– WIPO Charter

• TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights)

A Few Issues

• Bias toward enlarged IP rights – the assumption that more IP rights more innovation

• Failure to recognize that developed countries and developing countries have different needs

• IP law as it relates to the Internet disadvantages small and individual producers

• IP systems of laws fails to address pressing problems

Rational and Humane IP Policy

1) Balance between protected material and the public domain

2) Proportionality – e.g. copyright term3) Developmental appropriateness4) Participation and transparency5) Openness to alternatives and additions6) Embracing the Net as a solution7) Neutrality