Share the Knowledge, Expand the Wealth

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Artisans create Web sites and blogs that are viewable by hundreds of millions of readers. Musicians sample digital tracks and incorporate pieces in their own works. Graphic artists build modern compositions by layering on top of the handicraft of others.

CHANGE OF HEART.

Then there's software -- a superb example of collaboration. Software hasn't been built from scratch since the 1960s. Developers use libraries and "object classes" written by others. The distinguishing feature is how the building blocks are used conceptually in applications. The mission of the open software movement is exactly this: keeping critical code free.

If every software component that has ever been created had been legally protected, there would be no Microsoft (MSFT) today. It's disingenuous that the same companies that benefited the most from the work of others are so keen on protecting their own. None of this is new. Professor Larry Lessig, founder of Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, calls this zeitgeist the "commons," drawing a parallel to protected public grazing land in old English law.

But emerging information businesses can be crushed by the heavy-handed pinch of copyright and patent law, especially business-method or software patents. The protections afforded copyright owners have become ludicrous and go way beyond the original purpose of protecting reasonable revenue for the author. The so-called Sonny Bono Law passed by Congress in 1998 extends the lifetime of a corporate copyright up to 95 years or 70 years past an individual's death.

A PLAGUE OF LAWYERS.

It's too early to understand the impact of legal protection of DNA patterns, but if the history of the pharmaceutical industry is any indication, it doesn't bode well for biotech entrepreneurs. Corporate-friendly intellectual-property overregulation is an impediment to the growth of the nascent U.S. digital economy.

The consequences for the U.S. from excessive protection of digital goods are not just ethical or aesthetic. They are financial -- and eventually they will lead to economic isolation. Domestic legal jabber will not halt the planetwide expansion of digital goods, especially in revenue-hungry countries like China.

The fortunes of the future will be made by cooperation and collaboration, not litigation. Share the wealth.

Holtzman, who blogs at Globalpov.com, is the author of Privacy Lost and founder and chief technology officer of pseuds Inc. He writes frequently on technology and privacy at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.