CyberOne September 18, 2006 feedback production process law of cyberspace

LAW of CYBERSPACE September 18, 2006 Charles Nesson

Law of Real Property (atoms)

How is Code Different?

No Law Needed When Copying Code is Slow

Some law needed

Thomas Jefferson like a candlelike a song like wikipedia like second life

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Congress has the power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

For Profit Corporation aggregation of IP assets expression in wealth and power influence on Law

1790 “fourteen years” maybe x2

to 42 (1831)

56 (1909)

59 (1962)

61 (1965)

63 (1967)

64 (1968)

65 (1969)

66 (1970)

67 (1971)

68 (1972)

70 (1974)

75 (1976)

95 (1998)

Mickey Mouse Protection

1960’s-1970’s state of trade –competitiveness with Japan, Germany and East Asia –decline of American smokestack industries state of law –nations largely free to control their own IP environment –many nations offer little IP protection

Jack Valenti Theft!! Piracy!!!

an idea begins to take shape President Reagan vows commitment to maintaining American technological superiority.

Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act 1983 Watch List 1988 TRIPS 1994

UNIVAC

UNIVAC tube stacks

networks develop

world wide web Tim Berners-Lee creates HTML

John Perry Barlow

Shawn Fanning

The Napster

iMesh Gnutella Grokster Kazaa eDonkey WinMX Limewire Blubster

Thomas Jefferson like a candlelike a song like wikipedia like second life

Open Code Code as Knowledge Code as LAW

Bit Torrent

public domain common wealth in balance with proprietary domain corporate wealthbalance

charles fried It is the rock-bottom, indigestible fact of each person’s lonely individuality, his ultimate responsibility for his own beliefs, judgments and choices that grounds our demand that we be free.

tao teh ching To lead men and serve heaven, weigh the worth Of the one source: Use the single force Which doubles the strength of the strong By enabling man to go right, disabling him to go wrong, Be so charged with the nature of life that you give your people birth, That you mother your land, are the fit And ever-iving root of it: The seeing.root, whose eye is infinite.