Lessig, Lawrence (2001). The Internet Under Siege: Who owns the Internet? Foreign Policy. November/December 2001. www.lessig.org/content/columns/foreignpolicy1.pdf
This article is written by Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford Law School (http://www.lessig.org/). He is a respected theorist on issues of copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, as they relate to the internet. The article gives a conceptual introduction to how the internet emerged, in terms of who “owns” it, who has shaped it, and where it may be going. In short, the internet took off because its core resources were not divided among private providers – the arrangement current economic theory tends to favor – instead the core resources of the internet were left in a commons. The article describes the technical details. This structure allowed all kinds of innovation, from all kinds of people. The idea for many internet applications, such as web-based e-mail (hotmail) came from individuals, not corporations or governments.
The article helps readers to understand how this open structure has been beneficial to the development of the internet, and how a number of emerging practices could threaten this structure, and its benefits. These include: the transition from dial-up (telephone) to broadband (cable), where, unlike telephone companies, cable companies are not required to open their networks to competitors; an increase in the practice of patenting software; and the increasing control copyright holders are exercising over new technologies for distribution.