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So, I apologize that I am going to introduce these

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ideas so early in the morning,

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after such a late night last night.

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But I'll like you to think of an alcoholic.

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And I don't mean the kind of drop-dead

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drunken alcoholic,

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or somebody who is even recovering from AA.

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I am thinking just of the regular alcoholic

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who works hard to control the addiction he has.

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But this particular alcoholic, I want you to

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imagine that, in addition to the addiction to alcohol,

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he has a second addiction as well.

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Not the debilitating addiction that keeps him

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down all day.

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And not a recovered drug addict.

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But an addiction nonetheless

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that continues to pull him in another way,

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away from what he wants to do.

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A person with two addictions, pulling different ways,

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making him vulnerable, making him dangerous,

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as he is susceptible to the temptations of each.

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And the trick for this soul is to control

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and to regulate these addictions, to keep them under control.

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Now I give you this picture because

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I think it is a good picture of modern democratic government.

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Modern democratic government too, is pulled

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by these two separate kinds of addictions.

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Constantly pulled by craziness.

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Craziness to one side for the people, or at least wrongly,

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as the people push the government to do what

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is not in the public interest.

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Think of Peronism,

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or the kind of populism that drove the

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banking and housing bubble in the United States.

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Or in the other hand, an addiction to special interests,

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let's call them "incumbents", constantly tempting the government

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to do something crazy for public policy

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in the name of benefiting the incumbents.

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And here, in the United States at least, you can think about

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just about every major policy issue where this addiction

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has had its role.

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Each of these pulling constantly,

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constantly tempting, always the government is vulnerable.

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Always, as libertarians insist, it is dangerous

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because it can always be exploited

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by one of these two sources at least,

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the temptations of the incumbents.

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OK now, the Internet is a platform,

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it is an architecture,

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it is an architecture with consequences.

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It is an architecture that enables innovation,

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or at least enables a certain kind of innovation.

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Think of the history of innovation in the Internet.

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Netscape, started by a drop-out from undergraduate university.

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Hotmail, started by an Indian immigrant, sold to

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Microsoft for 400 million dollars.

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ICQ, started by an Israeli kid and then his father, who was here,

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selling it to AOL for 400 million dollars.

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Google, started by two Stanford dropouts.

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Napster, started by a dropout and someone who

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hadn't yet been able to be a dropout,

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sitting on this panel, here, today.

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Youtube, started by two Stanford students.

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Kazaa and Skype, started by kids from Denmark and Sweden.

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And then, of course, Facebook, and Twitter, started by kids.

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What unites all of these innovations?

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They were all done by kids, dropouts, and non-americans.

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Outsiders.

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Because this is what that architecture invited.

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It invited outsider innovation.

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Now, outsider innovation threatens the "incumbents".

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Skype threatens telephone companies.

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Youtube threatens television companies.

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Netflix threatens cable companies.

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Twitter threatens sanity -

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not that sanity was ever an incumbent.

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But then the threatened respond to this threat.

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By turning to the addict, modern democratic government,

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and using drug of choice (which in the United States at least

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is an endless amount of campaign cash),

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using that drug to secure the protection

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against these threats that the incumbent faces.

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Now this was the point that I think president Sarkozy missed yesterday,

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and the question that Jeff Jarvis raised when he suggested

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that the principle that should be carried to the G8

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is that the government "do no harm".

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President Sarkozy said, no, but we have important

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policy issues to resolve. But here is the point.

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We get that there are "hard policy" issues here.

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From copyright, to privacy to security to the problem of monopoly. We get it.

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The point is, is we don't trust the answers the

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government gives.

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And for good reasons we don't trust these answers,

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because on issue after issue, the answer that

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modern democratic government has given here,

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is an answer that happens to benefit

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the incumbents.

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And ignores an answer that might actually

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encourage more innovation.

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So think for example about the matter of copyright.

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Of course we need a system of copyright

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that guarantees that creators get compensated

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and secures their independence to create.

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No one serious denies that we have to have

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that system of protection.

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The question is not whether copyright should be protected.

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The question is how to protect copyright

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in a digital era.

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Whether the architecture of copyright,

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built for the XIX century,

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continues to make sense in the XXI.

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And what is the architecture that would make sense in the XXI?

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Now, is this the question the government is asking?

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I think the answer to that is no.

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Instead, what the government is proposing,

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around the world, specially here,

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and I apologize to my colleagues from France,

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but this is a technical legal term.

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The proposal suggested here is a "brain-dead"

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3-strikes proposal that happens to benefit incumbents.

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Ignoring the potential of innovation that could come from

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a new architecture for securing copyright.

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And you don't have to take my view for this.

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The recent report from the conservative government in Britain,

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the Hargreaves report, says of copyright:

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"Could it be true that laws designed more than three centuries

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ago with the express purpose of creating economic

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incentives for innovation,

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by protecting creators' rights

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are today obstructing innovation and economic growth?"

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The short answer is: "yes".

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"In the case of copyright policy, there is no doubt

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that the persuasive powers of celebrities and

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important UK creative companies

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have distorted policy outcomes."

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And not just, I suggest, in the UK.

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Think about the question of broadband policy.

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Europe, has actually been quite successful,

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in pushing competition in broadband,

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and therefore pushing broadband growth.

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The US has been a dismal failure in this respect.

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As we watch the US going from number 1 in broadband penetration,

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now to, depending on the scale,

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number 18, 19, or 28.

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And that change is because of policies that

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effectively block competition

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for broadband providers.

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Their answer, these broadband providers brought to

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our government, and got our government to impose

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actually benefited them and destroyed the incentives

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for them to compete in a way that would drive

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broadband penetration.

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I think in light of these examples,

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it is completely fair to be skeptical

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of the anwer modern democratic governments give.

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We should say to modern democratic government,

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you need to beware of incumbents bearing policy fixes.

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Because their job, the job of the incumbents,

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is not the same as your job, the job of the public policy maker.

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Their job is profit for them.

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Your job is the public good.

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And it is completely fair, for us to say,

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that until this addiction is solved, we should

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insist on minimalism in what government does.

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The kind of minimalism Jeff Jarvis spoke off when he

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spoke of "do no harm".

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An internet that embraces principles of open and free

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access, a neutral network to guarantee

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this open access, to protect the outsider.

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But here is the one think we know about this meeting,

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and its relationship to the future of the internet.

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The future of the internet is not Twitter,

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it is not Facebook, it is not Google,

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it is not even Rupert Murdoch.

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The future of the internet is not here.

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It wasn't invited, it does not even know how to be invited,

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because it doesn't yet focus on policies and fora like this.

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The least we can do is to preserve the architecture

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of this network that protects this future

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that is not here.

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Thank you very much.