other field of creativity. Though most distinguish innovation from creativity,
or creativity from commerce, I do not. The network that I am describing en-
ables both forms of creativity. It would leave the network open to the widest
range of commercial innovation; it would keep the barriers to this creativity
as low as possible.

Already we can see something of this potential. The open and neutral
platform of the Internet has spurred hundreds of companies to develop new
ways for individuals to interact. E-mail was the start; but most of the mes-
sages that now build contact are the flashes of chat in groups or between
individuals -- as spouses (and others) live at separate places of work with a
single window open to each other through an instant messenger. Groups
form easily to discuss any issue imaginable; public debate is enabled by
removing perhaps the most significant cost of human interaction --
synchronicity. I can add to your conversation tonight; you can follow it up
tomorrow; someone else, the day after.

And this is just the beginning, as the technology will only get better.
Thousands could experiment on this common platform for a better way;
millions of dot.com dollars will flow down the tube; but then a handful of
truly extraordinary innovations comes from these experiments. A wristwatch
for kids that squeezes knowingly as a mother touches hers, thirty miles away.
A Walkman where lovers can whisper to each other between songs, though
separated by an ocean. A technology to signal two people that both are avail-
able to talk on the phone -- _now._ A technology to enable a community to de-
cide local issues through deliberation in virtual juries. The potential can
only be glimpsed. And contrary to the technology doomsayers, this is a po-
tential for making human life more, not less, human.

But just at the cusp of this future, at the same time that we are being
pushed to the world where anyone can "rip, mix, [and] burn," a counter-
movement is raging all around. To ordinary people, this slogan from Apple
seems benign enough; to lawyers in the content industry, it is high treason.
To the lawyers who prosecute the laws of copyright, the very idea that the
music on "your" CD is "your music" is absurd. "Read the license," they're
likely to demand. "Read the law," they'll say, piling on. This culture that you
sing to yourself, or that swims all around you, this music that you pay
for many times over -- when you hear it on commercial radio, when you
buy a CD, when you pay a surplus at a large restaurant so that it can play
the same music on its speakers, when you purchase a movie ticket where
the song is the theme -- this music _is_not_yours_. You have no "right" to rip it,
or to mix it, or especially to burn it. You may have, the lawyers will insist,

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