Lawrence Lessig's book, The Future of Ideas, is now available free for anyone to download under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, he says on his blog.
The book argues that the unconstrained Internet produced a flowering of creativity that is now in danger of being snuffed out:
The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future. Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed. Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights.
Lessig is now a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the lawyer behind the Creative Commons license. His books include Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999).
