cyckV4

The Theories Behind Intellectual Property 25
An Economy of Verbs
The future forms and protections of intellectual property are densely obscured
from the entrance to the Virtual Age. Nevertheless, I can make (or reiterate) a few flat
statements which I earnestly believe won’t look too silly in fifty years.
In the absence of the old containers, almost everything we think we know about
intellectual property is wrong. We are going to have to unlearn it. We are going to have
to look at information as though we’d never seen the stuff before.
The protections which we will develop will rely far more on ethics and technology
than on law.
Encryption will be the technical basis for most intellectual property protection.
(And should, for this and other reasons, be made more widely available.)
The economy of the future will be based on relationship rather than possession. It
will be continuous rather than sequential.
And finally, in the years to come, most human exchange will be virtual rather than
physical, consisting not of stuff but the stuff of which dreams are made. Our future business
will be conducted in a world made more of verbs than nouns.
Questions:
This article was written from 1992 to 1993, right at the birth of the World Wide Web.
You live in the world John Perry Barlow was trying to predict.
1.) What are his essential points?
2.) What did he get right? Wrong? What still struck you with the force of the new?
3.) Which of his predictions are still up for grabs?
4.) Focus on music. Judging by your own behavior and that of your peers, is he right
about the efficacy or lack of efficacy of the law? About ethics? About the new business
models of the music industry?
International News Service v. The Associated Press
28 U.S. 215 (1918)
OPINION: Mr. Justice PITNEY delivered the opinion of the court.
The parties are competitors in the gathering and distribution of news and its publication
for profit in newspapers throughout the United States. The Associated Press, which
was complainant in the District Court, is a cooperative organization, incorporated under
the Membership Corporations Law of the State of New York, its members being individuals
who are either proprietors or representatives of about 950 daily newspapers published
in all parts of the United States. That a corporation may be organized under that act for
the purpose of gathering news for the use and benefit of its members and for publication
in newspapers owned or represented by them, is recognized by an amendment enacted in
1901 (Laws N.Y. 1901, c. 436). Complainant gathers in all parts of the world, by means
of various instrumentalities of its own, by exchange with its members, and by other appropriate
means, news and intelligence of current and recent events of interest to newspaper
readers and distributes it daily to its members for publication in their newspapers. The