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

Lessig, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375726446 ISBN 13: 9780375726446

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2002

Synopsis

The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone. In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the revolution has produced a counterrevolution of potentially devastating power and effect. Creativity once flourished because the Net protected a commons on which widest range of innovators could experiment. But now, manipulating the law for their own purposes, corporations have established themselves as virtual gatekeepers of the Net while Congress, in the pockets of media magnates, has rewritten copyright and patent laws to stifle creativity and progress.

Lessig weaves the history of technology and its relevant laws to make a lucid and accessible case to protect the sanctity of intellectual freedom. He shows how the door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology is creating extraordinary possibilities that have implications for all of us. Vital, eloquent, judicious and forthright, The Future of Ideas is a call to arms that we can ill afford to ignore.

About this title

Review:

If The Future of Ideas is bleak, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Author Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and keen observer of emerging technologies, makes a strong case that large corporations are staging an innovation-stifling power grab while we watch idly. The changes in copyright and other forms of intellectual property protection demanded by the media and software industries have the potential to choke off publicly held material, which Lessig sees as a kind of intellectual commons. He eloquently and persuasively decries this lopsided control of ideas and suggests practical solutions that consider the rights of both creators and consumers, while acknowledging the serious impact of new technologies on old ways of doing business. His proposals would let existing companies make money without using the tremendous advantages of incumbency to eliminate new killer apps before they can threaten the status quo. Readers who want a fair intellectual marketplace would do well to absorb the lessons in The Future of Ideas. --Rob Lightner

From the Back Cover:

“Dazzlingly inventive . . . It deserves to change the way we think about the electronic frontier.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A manifesto that shakes you up, making you aware of how much is lost when a culture turns ‘ideas’ into ‘intellectual property.’” —The New York Times Book Review

“A breath of fresh air in a crowded field . . . This book is a public service.” —The New York Times

“Lessig is one of the brightest minds grappling with the consequences of the digital world today, as deft and original with technical intricacies as he is with broad legal theory. . . . The Future of Ideas succeeds marvelously.” —The Nation

“Lessig’s book will serve as an excellent guide.” —The Washington Post Book World

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375726446
• ISBN 13: 9780375726446
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384