Name: The Future of Ideas
ISBN: 9780375726446

The Future of Ideas

In The future of ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of potentially devastating power and effect. Creativity once flourished because the Net protected a commons on which innovators could experiment. But now, manipulating the law for their own purposes, corporations have established themselves as virtual gatekeepers of the Net while Congress, in the pockets of media magnates, has rewritten copyright and patent laws to stifle creativity and progress. Lessig weaves the history of technology and its relevant laws to make a lucid and accessible case to protect the sanctity of intellectual freedom. He shows how the door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology is creating extraordinary possibilities that have implications for all of us.

What Hacker News says

dredmorbiusJul 2012

Strictly: campaign donations are a legal transaction, though previously in the US the limits were set far lower. I'd strongly recommend you read Lawrence Lessig's Future of Ideas and Republic Lost in which he first develops and then greatly expands the nature and scope of corrupting influences of money in the US, particularly in politics.

A difference of degree remains a difference, if only of degree. That said, independent third-party assessments of corruption such as the Corruption Perceptions Index as of 2010 hold the US (7.1) rather better than India (3.1) (the index uses a 10 point scale). There's room for improvement for both nations. Notably, the US is comperable with two South American countries, actually falling behind Chile (7.2) and just ahead of Urugay (6.9).

Topping the list, New Zealand and Denmark (tied at 9.3), and Finland and Sweden (tied at 9.2). Worst? Somalia (1.1), Myanmar and Afghanistan (1.4), and Iraq (1.5) (So, how's that regime-y change-y thing going for ya, Sarah?)

http://www.transparency.org/cpi2010/results

thread

LVBJun 2012

From Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" concerning the lawsuit against Bidder's Edge for scraping eBay data:

Both sides had a point, and while my bias is with [Bidder's Edge], I don’t mean to deny the plausibility of a different regime. What I do deny, however, is that the answer to this question is obvious.

thread