much of the world the greatest demonstration of the power of freedom --
and its lesson is one we must learn if its benefits are to be preserved.

Yet at just the time that the Internet is reminding us about the extraordi-
nary value of freedom, the Internet is being changed to take that freedom
away. Just as we are beginning to see the power that free resources produce,
changes in the architecture of the Internet -- both legal and technical -- are
sapping the Internet of this power. Fueled by a bias in favor of control,
pushed by those whose financial interests favor control, our social and po-
litical institutions are ratifying changes in the Internet that will reestablish
control and, in turn, reduce innovation on the Internet and in society gen-
erally.

I am dead against the changes we are seeing, but it is too much to believe
I could convince you that the full range is wrong. My aim is much more
limited. My hope is to show you the other side of what has become a taken-
for-granted idea -- the view that control of some sort is always better. If you
stay with me to the end, then I want you to leave this book simply with a
question about whether control is best. I don't have the data to prove any-
thing more than this limited hope. But we do have a history to show that
there is something important here to understand.

///\\\

This showing moves in three steps. In the part that follows, I introduce
more formally what I mean by "free." I relate that concept to the notion of
"the commons" and then introduce three contexts where resources in the
Internet are held in common. These commons are related to the innovation
the Internet has produced. My aim in this first part is to show just how.

I then consider in part II a parallel environment for innovation and cre-
ativity in "real space" -- the space not tied directly to the Internet, though in-
creasingly affected by it. This is the space where records are now made,
books are still written, and film is primarily shot. This space does not present
the commons the Internet is -- and for good reason, too. The character of
production in real space does not permit the freedom that the Internet does.
The constraint on creativity it yields there is a necessary, if unfortunate, fea-
ture of that space.

This context of creativity has been changed by the Internet. In the bal-
ance of part II, I offer examples of how. These examples will show how many
of the constraints that affected real-space creativity have been removed by
the architecture, and original legal context, of the Internet. These limita-
tions, perhaps justified before, are justified no more.

[[15]]

p014 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p015w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p016

v?