The Internet Under Siege

The Internet revolution has ended just as surprisingly as it began. None expected the explosion of creativity that the network produced; few expected that explosion to collapse as quickly and profoundly as it has. The phenomenon has the feel of a shooting star, flaring unannounced across the night sky, then disappearing just as unexpectedly. Under the guise of protecting private property, a series of new laws and regulations are dismantling the very architecture that made the Internet a framework for global innovation.

Neither the appearance nor disappearance of this revolution is difficult to understand. The difficulty is in accepting the lessons of the Internet's evolution. The Internet was born in the United States, but its success grew out of notions that seem far from the modern American ideals of property and the market. Americans are captivated by the idea, as explained by Yale Law School professor Carol Rose, that the world is best managed "when divided among private owners" and when the market perfectly regulates those divided resources. But the Internet took off precisely because core resources were not "divided among private owners." Instead, the core resources of the Internet were left in a "commons." It was this commons that engendered the extraordinary innovation that the Internet has seen. It is the enclosure of this commons that will bring about the Internet's demise.

This commons was built into the very architecture of the original network. Its design secured a right of decentralized innovation. It was this "innovation commons" that produced the diversity of creativity that the network has seen within the United States and, even more dramatically, abroad. Many of the Internet innovations we now take for granted (not the least of which is the World Wide Web) were the creations of "outsiders" -- foreign inventors who freely roamed the commons. Policymakers need to understand the importance of this architectural design to the innovation and creativity of the original network. The potential of the Internet has just begun to be realized, especially in the developing world, where many "real space" alternatives for commerce and innovation are neither free nor open.

Yet old ways of thinking are reasserting themselves within the United States to modify this design. Changes to the Internet's original core will in turn threaten the network's potential everywhere -- staunching the opportunity for innovation and creativity. Thus, at the moment this transformation could have a meaningful effect, a counterrevolution is succeeding in undermining the potential of this network. The motivation for this counterrevolution is as old as revolutions themselves. As Niccolò Machiavelli described long before the Internet, "Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new." And so it is today with us. Those who prospered under the old regime are threatened by the Internet. Those who would prosper under the new regime have not risen to defend it against the old; whether they will is still a question. So far, it appears they will not.

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