Category Archives: ideas

Alot of us have been talking up the importance of spectrum policy, and about the extraordinary opportunity that free spectrum (or unlicensed spectrum) creates for the next great internet revolution. Sarah Lai Stirland has a great piece framing the debate. I think Michael Powell might get this. If he does the right thing, it could be the most important governmental decision affecting the internet in 40 years…. Continue reading →

Ted Shelton ends his reply with a nice question: why should the protection for software “be different from copyright property in the first place.” That is the issue on which the only real disagreement lies (the other disagreements are illusory, caused I trust by my own lack of clarity)…. Continue reading →

Ted Shelton continues to do web logging credit in his careful and fair reply to my reply to … well you get the picture. And more importantly, he does this space credit for his patience in waiting for a reply. I apologize for the delay, but because his last post has helped me understand and frame this a bit better, the conversation continues…. Continue reading →

Dave’s valid call for more and different software to cycle us out of Andy Grove’s “Valley of Death” reminds me of a favorite interview that helped me write my last book. Marc Andreessen described the environment in which innovation flourished in the valley — when the platform for innovation was neutral, and innovators did not fear the power of others to crush their innovation. Power in the software market was Andreessen’s concern. Power in the content market drives much of Markoff’s. But the point in both cases is the same: give the past a veto over the future, and the… Continue reading →

of my Red Herring piece by a favorite boy genius…. Continue reading →

I stupidly have fueled two extremely fruitful debates–one about software copyright, and the other about Palladium and end-to-end values–stupidly because there is a third debate I need to be focused on just now. But there is a limit to the attention “limited Times” can demand. Back soon, I promise, to debates that in their civility and seriousness show the best of what this space can be…. Continue reading →

Ted Shelton has a careful and fair critique of my response to his original critique of my proposal for reducing state support for oblique creativity. We are completely agreed about one important point: That the ultimate question here is which system provides the best incentives to create and spread knowledge. As I read Ted’s response, the only dispute is about whether my condition upon getting copyright protection (that you escrow source code which, when the copyright expires, is free) would be too much of a penalty for software authors that they would instead choose private protection (secrecy) over public. That’s… Continue reading →

This is beautiful, Doc. And key. It’s not in my constitution to be optimistic, but if only msft would become as you hope. Talk about a legacy. Remember, it was Sony that defended the vcr, before they became a content company…. Continue reading →

Ted Shelton has some very thoughtful and balanced criticisms of my criticisms of “opaque creativity.” He writes that I am wrong: that IP creation in the past was always transparent and that today we have a new problem of obscuring production or presentation. Coca-cola, for example, has never disclosed their recipe for Coke — Would Lessig compel them to disclose this recipe? Is this the kind of transparency he is looking for? It’s a great example, but I think it cuts the other way…. Continue reading →

Ernie accuses me of optimism because of a piece in the Red Herring. In that piece, I argue that obsession about antitrust issues blinds us to other (also important) network and policy issues. And one in particular was how different DRM systems affect the network differently. Some, the argument goes, better support the end-to-end architecture that the network originally valued, and it would be easier to assure that token systems did so than copy protection systems. (Copyfight as usual puts it better than I.) Does that make me an optimist? Wouldn’t that be nice. But no: I am not arguing… Continue reading →