CyberOneSeptember 18, 2006

feedbackproduction processlaw 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 Jeffersonlike a candle like 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;

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;

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;

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;

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;

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 ValentiTheft!! Piracy!!!

an idea begins to take shape

President Reagan vows commitment to maintaining American technological superiority.

Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act

1983

Watch List1988

TRIPS 1994

UNIVAC

UNIVAC tube stacks

networks develop

world wide web

Tim Berners-Lee creates HTML - 1991

John Perry Barlow

Shawn Fanning

The Napster

iMeshGnutellaGrokster

KazaaeDonkeyWinMX

LimewireBlubster

Thomas Jeffersonlike a candle like a song

like wikipedia like second life

Open CodeCode as Knowledge

Code as LAW

Bit Torrent

public domaincommonwealth

in balance with

proprietary domaincorporate

wealth

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 worthOf the one source:Use the single forceWhich doubles the strength of the strongBy 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 fitAnd ever-iving root of it:The seeing.root, whose eye is infinite.