Review of Chapter 1 "Free" of "The Future Of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig

An interesting topic of "Freedom of Thoughts" is discussed by Lawrence Lessig. By reading his book "The Future Of Ideas" it is quite obvious that he is really a thoughtful person.

I will start the review with Copyright. Copyright impede into your Creativity by limiting your freedom of thought i.e. you are told you are free but your are given list of things you shouldn’t be performing. So it bounds your thoughts and eventually you are more conscious about laws than quality.

Lessig talks about that cultural blindness which doesn’t allow us to see the
demise.This blindness will harm the environment of innovation. Not just the innovation
of Internet entrepreneurs, but also the innovation of authors or artists more generally.
This blindness will lead to changes in the Internet that will undermine
its potential for building something new—a potential realized in the
original Internet, but increasingly compromised as that original Net is
changed.

Lessig mentions both technical and legal constraints. But he emphasizes on the legal constraint that is effecting the Freedom of thoughts of individuals. It is instead a burden created by law—by intellectual property as well as other government-granted exclusive
rights. The promise of many-to-many communication that defined the
early Internet is being replaced by a reality of many ways to buy things
and many ways to select among what is offered.
But except for important subject
matter constraints imposed by the law, the law had essentially no role in saying
how one person could take and remake the work of someone else. This
act of creativity was free, or at least free of the law.

There are elements of this future that we can fairly imagine. They are
the consequences of falling costs, and hence falling barriers to creativity.
The most dramatic are the changes in the costs of distribution; but just as
important are the changes in the costs of production. Both are the consequences
of going digital: digital technologies create and replicate reality
much more efficiently than nondigital technology does. This will mean a
world of change.

“Consumers” is the one who simply consumes. But according to lessig “Consumer" do more than simply consume.Blog writers, Digital artists and music mixers are not strictly consumers of internet services because they use it for expressing their feelings, knowledge and creativity etc.

In socialism, its faith in the government to allocate and regulate resources; and in Capitalism the free-market places its faith in the market for allocating or regulating resources.

A resource is “free” if (1) one can use it without the
permission of anyone else; or (2) the permission one needs is granted neutrally.

How a resource is produced says nothing about how access to that resource
is granted. Production is different from consumption.
And while the ordinary and sensible rule for most goods is the “pay me this for that” model
of the local convenience store, a second’s reflection reveals that there is a
wide range of resources that we make available in a completely different
way.

Many resources must be controlled if they are to be produced
or sustained. I should have the right to control access to my house
and my car. You shouldn’t be allowed to rifle through my desk. Microsoftshould have the right to control access to its source code. If all resources are set free then resources can be harmfully manipulated.

There is no harm in AOL’s view if there are constraints here, it
is simply because there are
strong reasons why many are trying to rebuild these constraints: they will enable
these existing and powerful interests to protect themselves from the
competitive threat the Internet represents. The old, in other words, is bending
the Net to protect itself against the new.

These were few important topics discussed by Lawrence Lessig in chapter 1 "Free" of his Book "The Future Of Ideas".