Lawrence Lessig Keynote - e-G8

Paris, 25 May 2011: Keynote given at e-G8 conference, introducing Innovation panel. ;

So, I apologize that I am going to introduce these

ideas so early in the morning,

after such a late night last night.

But I'll like you to think of an alcoholic.

And I don't mean the kind of drop-dead

drunken alcoholic,

or somebody who is even recovering from AA.

I am thinking just of the regular alcoholic

who works hard to control the addiction he has.

But this particular alcoholic, I want you to

imagine that, in addition to the addiction to alcohol,

he has a second addiction as well.

Not the debilitating addiction that keeps him

down all day.

And not a recovered drug addict.

But an addiction nonetheless

that continues to pull him in another way,

away from what he wants to do.

A person with two addictions, pulling different ways,

making him vulnerable, making him dangerous,

as he is susceptible to the temptations of each.

And the trick for this soul is to control

and to regulate these addictions, to keep them under control.

Now I give you this picture because

I think it is a good picture of modern democratic government.

Modern democratic government too, is pulled

by these two separate kinds of addictions.

Constantly pulled by craziness.

Craziness to one side for the people, or at least wrongly,

as the people push the government to do what

is not in the public interest.

Think of Peronism,

or the kind of populism that drove the

banking and housing bubble in the United States.

Or in the other hand, an addiction to special interests,

let's call them "incumbents", constantly tempting the government

to do something crazy for public policy

in the name of benefiting the incumbents.

And here, in the United States at least, you can think about

just about every major policy issue where this addiction

has had its role.

Each of these pulling constantly,

constantly tempting, always the government is vulnerable.

Always, as libertarians insist, it is dangerous

because it can always be exploited

by one of these two sources at least,

the temptations of the incumbents.

OK now, the Internet is a platform,

it is an architecture,

it is an architecture with consequences.

It is an architecture that enables innovation,

or at least enables a certain kind of innovation.

Think of the history of innovation in the Internet.

Netscape, started by a drop-out from undergraduate university.

Hotmail, started by an Indian immigrant, sold to

Microsoft for 400 million dollars.

ICQ, started by an Israeli kid and then his father, who was here,

selling it to AOL for 400 million dollars.

Google, started by two Stanford dropouts.

Napster, started by a dropout and someone who

hadn't yet been able to be a dropout,

sitting on this panel, here, today.

Youtube, started by two Stanford students.

Kazaa and Skype, started by kids from Denmark and Sweden.

And then, of course, Facebook, and Twitter, started by kids.

What unites all of these innovations?

They were all done by kids, dropouts, and non-americans.

Outsiders.

Because this is what that architecture invited.

It invited outsider innovation.

Now, outsider innovation threatens the "incumbents".

Skype threatens telephone companies.

Youtube threatens television companies.

Netflix threatens cable companies.

Twitter threatens sanity -

not that sanity was ever an incumbent.

But then the threatened respond to this threat.

By turning to the addict, modern democratic government,

and using drug of choice (which in the United States at least

is an endless amount of campaign cash),

using that drug to secure the protection

against these threats that the incumbent faces.

Now this was the point that I think president Sarkozy missed yesterday,

and the question that Jeff Jarvis raised when he suggested

that the principle that should be carried to the G8

is that the government "do no harm".

President Sarkozy said, no, but we have important

policy issues to resolve. But here is the point.

We get that there are "hard policy" issues here.

From copyright, to privacy to security to the problem of monopoly. We get it.

The point is, is we don't trust the answers the

government gives.

And for good reasons we don't trust these answers,

because on issue after issue, the answer that

modern democratic government has given here,

is an answer that happens to benefit

the incumbents.

And ignores an answer that might actually

encourage more innovation.

So think for example about the matter of copyright.

Of course we need a system of copyright

that guarantees that creators get compensated

and secures their independence to create.

No one serious denies that we have to have

that system of protection.

The question is not whether copyright should be protected.

The question is how to protect copyright

in a digital era.

Whether the architecture of copyright,

built for the XIX century,

continues to make sense in the XXI.

And what is the architecture that would make sense in the XXI?

Now, is this the question the government is asking?

I think the answer to that is no.

Instead, what the government is proposing,

around the world, specially here,

and I apologize to my colleagues from France,

but this is a technical legal term.

The proposal suggested here is a "brain-dead"

3-strikes proposal that happens to benefit incumbents.

Ignoring the potential of innovation that could come from

a new architecture for securing copyright.

And you don't have to take my view for this.

The recent report from the conservative government in Britain,

the Hargreaves report, says of copyright:

"Could it be true that laws designed more than three centuries

ago with the express purpose of creating economic

incentives for innovation,

by protecting creators' rights

are today obstructing innovation and economic growth?"

The short answer is: "yes".

"In the case of copyright policy, there is no doubt

that the persuasive powers of celebrities and

important UK creative companies

have distorted policy outcomes."

And not just, I suggest, in the UK.

Think about the question of broadband policy.

Europe, has actually been quite successful,

in pushing competition in broadband,

and therefore pushing broadband growth.

The US has been a dismal failure in this respect.

As we watch the US going from number 1 in broadband penetration,

now to, depending on the scale,

number 18, 19, or 28.

And that change is because of policies that

effectively block competition

for broadband providers.

Their answer, these broadband providers brought to

our government, and got our government to impose

actually benefited them and destroyed the incentives

for them to compete in a way that would drive

broadband penetration.

I think in light of these examples,

it is completely fair to be skeptical

of the anwer modern democratic governments give.

We should say to modern democratic government,

you need to beware of incumbents bearing policy fixes.

Because their job, the job of the incumbents,

is not the same as your job, the job of the public policy maker.

Their job is profit for them.

Your job is the public good.

And it is completely fair, for us to say,

that until this addiction is solved, we should

insist on minimalism in what government does.

The kind of minimalism Jeff Jarvis spoke off when he

spoke of "do no harm".

An internet that embraces principles of open and free

access, a neutral network to guarantee

this open access, to protect the outsider.

But here is the one think we know about this meeting,

and its relationship to the future of the internet.

The future of the internet is not Twitter,

it is not Facebook, it is not Google,

it is not even Rupert Murdoch.

The future of the internet is not here.

It wasn't invited, it does not even know how to be invited,

because it doesn't yet focus on policies and fora like this.

The least we can do is to preserve the architecture

of this network that protects this future

that is not here.

Thank you very much.