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[I'm using this English GB track to script audio descriptions - CA] [Innovation & its Enemies]
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[<1>]
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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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[photo of drunk sleeping on the earth]
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And I don't mean the kind of drop-dead
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drunken alcoholic,
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[picture of AA meeting]
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or somebody who is even recovering from AA.
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[Bottles: vodka and other spirits]
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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.