Or that you’re looking down the wrong end of the telescope.

Yes, innovation does become an end in itself; debate that all you like, I don’t care. What I do care about is that I am an innovative creature, sharing thereby in the nature of the Creator, and take great joy in it. It is a very important part of who and what I am.

Beyond that, as someone famous said: necessity is the mother of invention. In other words: I see a need, I think of a way to meet it. In the process, many people benefit.

If anything threatens innovation generally, it is unequivocally bad, because the above benefits to the individual and society as a whole – while not necessarily having a higher priority than other things – could never be outweighed by any possible benefit to their suppression.

While necessarily an integral part of the network neutrality debate, innovation ought not be the linchpin upon which end-to-end architecture of the Internet hangs. Innovation is too narrow conceptually because of its traditional economic connection with the competitive process and commercial markets. Like many other infrastructure resources, the Internet facilitates a wide range of socially valuable downstream activities that are not really innovative.

What is the social value of the Internet? It is very difficult to estimate the full social value of the Internet, in large part because of the wide variety of downstream uses that generate public goods and non-market goods. Despite such difficulty, we know that the Internet is transforming society. The transformation is similar to transformations that we have experienced in the past with other infrastructures, yet things are changing in a more rapid, widespread and dramatic fashion.

The Internet environment is quickly becoming integral to the lives, affairs and relationships of individuals, companies, universities, organizations, and governments worldwide, and it is having significant effects on fundamental social processes and resource systems that generate value for society. Commerce, community, culture, education, government, health, politics and science are all information- and communications-intensive systems that are being transformed by the Internet. And the transformation is taking place at the ends, where people are empowered to participate and are engaged in socially valuable, productive activities (including but not limited to innovation).

I am developing these ideas in an article focused infrastructure resources generally. I hope to post the draft on ssrn.com soon. I gave a talk about this at Stanford in the spring � audio recording at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/events/archives/brett_m_frischmann.shtml.

But isn’t this simply a case of “rebels without a cause”? But now technology allows the rebellion to go beyond just parents, and to the entire copyright regime.

Not trying to be combative here… just attempting to see the other side… as peace often requires 😉

-Derek Slater
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/

Actually, P2P networks bring lots of value: people will be saving money, bandwidth will be much improved, and people will be happier. As a result, they can spend the money they saved on *new* items, like the iPod. “Gifts” of innovation create more innovation because they free up money for people to buy new things that currently don’t have a market. If people keep spending money on the same old thing, there won’t be very much growth.

But my point is that competition is a strong incentive to innovate; and conversely, earning money is a strong incentive to follow through with innovative ideas. If by working 80 hour weeks for several months with thousands of your own savings spent to work on a new idea was only rewarded with compensation of savings lost, there probably wouldn’t be too many entrepreneurs.

But competition does mean it’s a tough game: in capitalism, you can never rest unless you want to be overtaken (think of how Apple didn’t innovate much in the 90s and let Windows surpass them; they rested on their laurels too long). The record companies either have to get into the new markets, or just “cash out”. Maybe someone could say that capitalism hurts the human spirit because they always have to keep on working, but maybe that helps it more than it hurts. Eitherway, allowing people to save money seems to be a just solution to the problem.

We could connect the two via Socrates round about definition of �justice.� Admittedly, he (Plato) never comes out and defines justice. However, if my memory serves me correctly, the common understanding of Socrates definition of justice is something like: If people (citizens) are allowed to truly be who they are, and allowed to do what they do best, then people can truly contribute the greatest social benefit to society and to themselves individually.

Innovation is a component of evolution. Evolution and the core of our existence are intertwined. Thus, for people to be who they truly are, the must be allowed to evolve. Otherwise, people will not be allowed to be who they truly are, disharmony and injustice will result and human happiness will not be achieved.

Placing unnatural restrictions on human evolution will thwart happiness. I believe that it is beyond dispute that the entire notion of Copyright exists outside the philosophical construct of �natural law.� It would be a tough sell to argue that God granted man the unalienable right to publishing royalties.

If we have to choose between the two, degradation or improvement, innovation certainly is the preferable way to go in my opinion.

> Price competition is important for making capitalism work,
> however: it�s what makes people *want* to innovate in the
> first place. Thus, competition causes innovation, which
> causes growth.

If you are going historically backwards, you will notice that primitive communities have had no money. “Price” is irrelevant for innovation. What you describe is merely “role of innovation in capitalism.”

If you will ever deal with innovative people what will strike you is that they do not care about “price.” It is only later after innovation comes into Real World and gets implemented – you need money for deployment – things get material and they got they price.

Money and price in modern world used to organize things, while innovations are used to destroy old system. This is not chicken and egg problem – money and price were by themselves innovation long time ago. Quite revolutionary innovations. They helped to steam exchange of goods. So here I come to my another point.

Exchange of thoughts & goods seemed to be the most popular explanation for Internet.

Compare out lives in tribes many centuries ago to our modern life. Community vs. privacy, common living quoters vs. private apartments, health of community vs. private interests, etc. On course of development of our society we leaped from mostly open society to mostly closed one. Appearance of Internet for me is the sign that our society is starting to make a leap in other direction. Internet helps us to be closer to each other. Now, without leaving you private apartments, you may have lots of friends around world. And we making friends by sharing out intimate moments with them. Sharing – not exchange.

Sharing – not exchange. It is important to notice that difference. Our capitalist society is based on “exchange” ideology. Yeah, you might loosen the that by “credit,” but still it (exchange) is reflection of out capitalist thinking. And Internet helped to spring up “sharing” – we do share what we have without losing it. Sharing of a kind of thoughts sharing. That really contradicts to ideology of capitalism with its exchange and price tag attached to everything. Internet (just like roads many millennia ago) helping to connect anyone to everyone.

Some NLP guys might be better explaining the difference between words attached to capitalism and internet.

P.S. To McNeil: Innovation doesn’t mean growth. Innovation as P2P networks do damage recording companies in long run. Destructive innovation. They (P2P networks) help society at large, spreading our culture even further – but they have no price interests. Since we are measuring all things by they price, P2P means stagnation – it produces no *direct* value.