The door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology makes an extraordinary future possible. Important avenues of thought and free expression will increasingly be closed off. It is between progress and a new Dark Ages, in which our capacity to create is confined by an architecture of control and a society more perfectly monitored and filtered than any before in history. The choice Lawrence Lessig presents is not between progress and the status quo. Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights. Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to “tame” the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed. The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future. This shift will destroy the opportunities for creativity and innovation that the Internet originally engendered. But this structural design is changing–both legally and technically. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information–the ideas of our era–could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. The Internet’s very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment.

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