Lawrence Lessig has highlighted different aspects related to the technological changes evolved over the years. Starting from the emergence and obstructions to creativity, the author takes into account the law of copyright. To use some work which is recognizable by anybody, one has to clear the rights and pay. Lawyers check whether the permission could be granted or not. Less control over this leads to high costs.
The technological and cultural revolution over the generations has produced the most powerful and diverse urge to innovation of any in modern times. The internet could change its character over time but it’s not going to diminish. In understanding this revolution and of the creativity it has induced, we normally miss a very important part. Nobody notices as it disappears or removed. There is this blind spot in our culture. This blindness will harm the environment of innovation. Not only the innovation of internet entrepreneurs be effected, but also the innovation of authors or artists. This blindness would in turn bring changes to the internet, undermining its potential for building something new. The struggle against these changes has given rise to the struggle between ‘old’ and ‘new’. Those who prospered under the old regime are threatened by the internet. The environment designed to enable the new is being transformed to protect the old.
There are constraints to innovation which are not economic constraints. Rather, these are created by law such as intellectual property as well as other government granted exclusive rights. Although everything would be available but what gets offered will be what just fits within the current model of the systems of distribution. The future that we could have if not like present is not easy to describe because of the fact that nobody can predict how the internet will develop. The elements of this future would be the consequences of falling costs, which would in turn reduce the barriers to creativity. The changes that occur in the costs of production and the costs of distribution would be the result of going digital. Digital technologies create and replicate reality more efficiently that non digital.
Digital technology could enable an extraordinary range of ordinary people to become part of the creative process. ‘Consumer’ is not someone who should just consume a product. According to Lessig, it is the move from the life a ‘consumer’ i.e. passive and fed to a life where one can individually and collectively participate in making something new. Technology enables a whole generation to create and through the infrastructure of internet to share the creativity with the rest of the world. The network described here would leave the network open to the widest range of commercial innovation and would also keep the barriers to creativity very low.
The point of concern earlier was that are we in a digital age, to be a free society? There are free resources available for taking and controlled resources for which the permission of someone is needed before use. Another question yet to be solved is whether the state or the market works best in controlling the resources. Mostly, the market trumps the state. But, twentieth century has taught that the dominance of private over state ordering is better. But today’s concern is whether the resources should be free at all?
A resource is ‘free’ if either one can use it without the permission of someone else or the permission one needs is granted neutrally. Free resources have always been central to innovation, creativity and democracy. Resource production and resource access do not talk of each other. Production is different from consumption. Although, normally there is a rule of ‘pay me this for that’, there are a wide range of resources that are made available in completely different ways.
There are some resources which should not be free. These could include resources such as those called ‘mine’. If one didn’t have access to these, one would have little incentive to produce them, including those called mine. Nothing can better demonstrate the importance of free resources to innovation and creativity than internet. It is the simplest reply to those who argue that control is necessary if innovation is to occur.
Features that originally created the environment of free creativity are changing back to the barriers that were originally removed by the internet. The old, is protecting itself against the new by the help of Net.
