Review on the chapter "Free" from book "The future of Ideas"

The Future of Ideas: (2001) is a book by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford Law School, who is well known as a critic of the extension of the copyright term in US.
In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains that the Internet revolution has come and how the revolution has produced a counterrevolution of potentially devastating power and effect. Creativity was once flourished but now copyright and patent laws are wasting the creativity and progress.


In this chapter “Free” the writer firstly discussed that how the copyrights impede creativity. He gave certain examples to show that many of the creative work was wasted because someone claimed that piece of art of some part or that work as their own. And people are not giving importance to this problem. This blindness will harm the environment of innovation.
While copyright helps artists get rewarded for their work, he warns that a copyright regime that is too strict and grants copyright for too long a period of time can destroy innovation, as the future always builds on the past.
He then discussed that how the free resources available to everybody on the internet had helped an individual. Digital technology could enable an extraordinary range of ordinary people to become part of a creative process and to move from the life of a consumer of music, film, art, and commerce to a life where one can individually and collectively participate in making something new and is a great opportunity for each and every individual. But the copyrights affect commercial as well as noncommercial activities, the arts as well as the sciences. The blog writers, digital artists and music mixers are strictly consumers of Internet services because they have every resource available on the internet for their use.
He then described that every society has resources that are free and resources that are controlled. Free resources are those available for the taking. Controlled resources are those for which the permission of someone is needed before the resource can be used. According to the writer a resource is “free” if
(1) One can use it without the permission of anyone else
(2) The permission one needs is granted neutrally
The resources cost money to produce while production is different from consumption. Its access may be free of cost n available to everybody n might need payment. But if all the resources will be free then it will create a problem for the writers art workers for their work will never be rewarded.


In the end he introduced the concept to the notion of the commons and then introduced three contexts where resources in the Internet are held in common. Then consider a parallel environment for innovation and creativity in real space. The argument of the third and final part of this book is that the environment of the Internet is now changing. Both legal and technical features that originally created this environment of free creativity are now being changed. They are being changed in ways that will reintroduce the very barriers that the Internet originally removed.