and of the creativity it has induced, we systematically miss the role of a cru-
cially important part. We therefore don't even notice as this part disappears
or, more important, is removed. Blind to its effect, we don't watch for its
demise.

This blindness will harm the environment of innovation. Not just the in-
novation of Internet entrepreneurs (though that is an extremely important
part of what I mean), but also the innovation of authors or artists more gen-
erally. This blindness will lead to changes in the Internet that will under-
mine its potential for building something new -- a potential realized in the
original Internet, but increasingly compromised as that original Net is
changed.

The struggle against these changes is not the traditional struggle between
Left and Right or between conservative and liberal. To question assump-
tions about the scope of "property" is not to question property. I am fanati-
cally pro-market, in the market's proper sphere. I don't doubt the important
and valuable role played by property in most, maybe just about all, contexts.
This is not an argument about commerce _versus_ something else. The inno-
vation that I defend is commercial and noncommercial alike; the argu-
ments I draw upon to defend it are as strongly tied to the Right as to the Left.

Instead, the real struggle at stake now is between _old_ and _new._ The story
on the following pages is about how an environment designed to enable the
new is being transformed to protect the old -- transformed by courts, by
legislators, and by the very coders who built the original Net.

_Old_ versus _new_. That battle is nothing new. As Machiavelli wrote in _The_
_Prince:_

____ Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old
____ regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would
____ prosper under the new. Their support is indifferent partly from fear and
____ partly because they are generally incredulous, never really trusting new
____ things unless they have tested them by experience.[1-6]

And so it is today with us: those who prospered under the old regime are
threatened by the Internet; this is the story of how they react. Those who
would prosper under the new regime have not risen to defend it against the
old; whether they will is the question this book asks. The answer so far is
clear: They will not.

***

[[6]]

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