Revisiting Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture

I was re-reading Lessig's chapter on property within his excellent book. He does a wonderful job explaining the effect of the DCMA. He discusses the growing power of the publishing industries of music, newspapers, movies and books, drawing clear parallels between them. He looks concretely at the restrictions that the book publishing industry would like to impose upon books, that limits first sale and copying rights in dramatic ways. He goes on to discuss how law, DRM, protective technologies, and all the tracking devices available on computers combine to limit and monitor uses that were once free.

The most important element of Lessig’s work makes clear the threat monopolies pose to the world of ideas. In Lessig’s view it is the monopolies who control, indeed own, intellectual property. It is not individual thinkers who control this material and benefit primarily from the restrictions the monopolies want to impose.

I suppose, I could be sanguine that the e technologies will not destroy the viability of intellectual property. But I remain dreadfully frightened that this is so. I want intellectual labor to be understand as labor that needs support.