Tuesday, April 23
IP: Bruce Sterling closing CFP Speech
"The supposed explosion of digital creativity
on a million websites and a thousand channels... Well,
come 2002, it boils down to 95% market share by a single
ruthless feudal empire! And you wonder where your
excitement's gone? A thing like Linux... that isn't a
competitive free-market innovation, that thing is like a
slave revolt.
But it gets weirder. The public interest in public-
domain intellectual property freezes dead with the humble
birth of a cartoon mouse on a tabletop in Kansas City. The
Mouse is flash-frozen in legal ice. He's unrotting. He's
undying. He's cryogenically preserved.... In ancient
Rome, folks thought it was pretty decadent when the
Emperor Caligula made his horse into a Senator. But in
the modern US Senate, there's a Senator who's a cartoon
mouse!"
