Beyond Broadcast Notes: Keynote Address

Keynote: Reinventing the Gatekeeper
James Boyle, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School

We’re bad at predicting the future of technology; we have to understand that and the policy implications of it.

The inability to see the potential of commons-based media: we are blind to the opportunities this kind of media offers at every level; there has to be a balance between proprietary and open source. How open should it be? How closed? These questions apply from user-generated content to internet protocols.

We tend to undervalue the potential of openness.

We undervalue the costs of locking up content with extended copyright.

Why? Our understanding of “property” is still based on physical things.

The Internet is the story of an anomaly – the creation of an open structure when, if it had been created in the conventional sense, would probably never been as open – more like Mini-tel than the Internet.

Where is the balance of “open” and “control”? We need to be aware of our cognitive biases and how they shape our decision making.

Boyle: Leave as open as possible, as long as possible, so others can see possibilities that you can’t and make them real.