 All right now We've gotten off to a good start there was a negative cast in its way to the morning there was fear in What was described? from my point of view this cyber environment has three big players in it its government for profit and not for profit Those are the three big players When the poker game gets played and the rules get made those are the interests that are in competition and Yes, we have this net which came out of nonprofit in this most remarkable way and Has now established itself To our present point, but yet you could feel the fear. I worried when John was Seeking to rely on the norms that we're going to flow because someone from Toronto Asked me not to send this utterly fascinating video to my three best friends and then we come to Paul free session where we see the Play of opposition, I mean think of it in terms of the enemies of the net The threat to the openness of the net surely government and here we see in Paul free's Session how much the net is opposing government and how government is becoming more and more sophisticated in how to respond But nowhere do I see in there an affirmative strategy for the net That just seems actually to be poking our enemy make government more and more afraid of the net and whoa that Patriot act that Jonathan referred to could be just around the corner So I was uplifted when I heard the end of the session just completed with your high and Jimbo When they really got to it, I mean think of what Wikipedia actually is So here's my first question to this panel. We have a wonderful panel here. I Have Mike Frickless General counsel of Viacom Mike, what do you do just in the day? What's a typical day? What do you actually do? Yeah, get them up sound on the mic Test test test turn it on It's a button on the top Mike's on Okay, do we have it? You have me now, okay all right, so You know Viacom is a really diverse company We're engaged in various sorts of media principally cable television and The movie business a tremendous number of internet businesses and the like and my day is kind of a combination of Management planning structures and ways to deal with certain numbers of problems and keeping those projects moving along and dealing with a number of surprises that seem to come out of the woodwork and need to be dealt with it that could be Opportunities or could be threats in one way or another to the organization. So Sometimes there are disputes with other large corporations that we have to try to figure out a way through the dispute It involves understanding what the law is understanding what the business interests are Understanding and and trying to predict what the outcome is and what's the best interest of the company other times Sometimes those are very short term and sometimes they're extremely long term and other we deal with advising boards of directors Fielding calls from directors or planning for board meetings planning for how the organization finances itself just quick What is Viacom Viacom is a It's an entertainment company where they got engaged in making motion pictures And distributing motion pictures we own the MTV Networks was a very large collection of Content assets cable networks that everybody's heard of MTV Nickelodeon VH1 comedy central country music television It's a hundred and forty channels around the world And in addition over 400 web properties We make a video game that people may have heard about called rock band, which has been extremely successful made up here in Boston and In a number of ancillary businesses related to that. Okay, great Esther Dyson Public Intellectual from a viewpoint as a vest venture capitalist investor right on the edge and somehow able to articulate Truth without a big institution like Harvard in back of you, but with credibility. That's just pretty damn good What do you do during the day? Well my bio says I'm a court jester and The other bit of it says I'm the author of a commercially successful refrigerator magnet which Says in its entirety always make new mistakes. I Swim every morning and then beyond that I'm retired, which means I get to do whatever I like which is mostly Sitting on boards investing in companies going around and giving talks writing the odd article I Do a fair amount of work with various self-styled do-good groups that are trying to foster democracy and things like that in Emerging markets, we haven't yet paid much attention to the US except for the sunlight foundation, which I'm also on the board of So that's kind of the range and then then I'm getting involved in space travel and I'm putting my genome up on the internet with all my health records publicly All right And Reed Hunt Consultant to the Telecom industry McKenzie former chairman of the FCC What do you do during the day? Always needs a new introduction And a new microphone Just go with it. They'll get it, but I Would say that on average every other day I get up and go to the airport and fly somewhere I'm on the board of seven companies six of which are in Silicon Valley and When I'm not Activities being in Washington. I'm usually kibbutz seeing with somebody or other about a politics Well, great. All right, so Here it's true. I'm Charlie Nesson, but as you may have seen this morning. I also speak for Ian Who is the Dean of cyberspace and? he Actually, it's a she but I call it he he Ian has some questions the first is Wikipedia you see it You see what it is. You see how fantastic it is you see it as an instantiation of the building of a knowledge commons you see its ambition in terms of language and Accessibility how did the university world miss it? Why isn't that a why why? Why why didn't it come out of someplace like Harvard or MIT? Why did it have to get in who was this person who did this? The reason it came neither from university or government I think is that These institutions have rules and process Which don't Don't welcome strangers they they expect people to do things Get the degree rise through the faculty if you're a government you need to Give a voice to everybody. You can't you can't be arbitrary So when you mentioned the big three players you did really leave out all the individuals and they're not Joining together as a single voice They are a collection of diverse voices Which is why the internet is so exciting and Wikipedia itself is Really nothing more than a rule set Some rule sets work some don't some survive and grow Other rule sets you never heard about because they didn't become Wikipedia I was fascinated when you high was talking about fishkin and the research in essentially process for making group enterprise Constructive and its relation to the neutral point of view in Wikipedia So yes, I'm seeing exactly what you're saying and since I'm sitting here I'll tell you about something else. It's really cool that you should know about which is called barcode Wikipedia Started in the UK you can find out about it si camp dot org which stands for silicon no social innovation camp dot org and It's it's a Wikipedia for barcodes so that The topics are not famous people but our products with barcodes and Anybody can talk about their ingredients The child labor that was used to make them the companies that produce them the kinds of diseases they lead to the Their social stand whatever it is, but it's it's strictly about products that have barcodes and It's a brilliant idea it Will probably borrow something from Wikipedia with some of its rules and probably not with others All right, so let me pose my question further I'm thinking from the viewpoint of eon University and University having been in its way circumscribed as you suggest by these boundaries that make us inward-looking and may be therefore not Not think even thinking about how to contribute our content to the comments It's just not been on our agenda in the past But now as we start to see business plans again of the kind that you hi was and Jimbo were referring to where you leave a lot on the table it's quite plausible for a university to think of putting its content out in a way that's very open MIT has broken the ground and Not requiring that we charge for it in a sense. We leave that on the table. We still run our same old system of all that so from the vantage point of University potentially seeing an affirmative strategy strategy for itself really Opening up out into this open space. I Feel that this offers just an opportunity that Talk in a way about what the problems are that we face in doing it All right, so Mike. Let me just start with you We have a library We in a sense. We're a public media company We are as much like WGBH as we are like MIT We sit on a huge archive of material Much of which is constrained by copyright in a way that doesn't allow us to put it up on the net without going through a permission system which is mired in transaction costs cobwebs So that basically what it means is we can't use our treasure Unless we pay a huge amount in time and money to free it up We haven't got it neither with the will nor the money and so It sits there how How how? Talk to me from your point of view. You're you you sit on a huge pile of Assets I do and you are looking at that same cobweb system from the other side All right, talk to me. Sure I You know, I don't think it's a bad question and I think that Because there are new business models that work and are exciting and interesting like Wikipedia I don't necessarily think it means that universities have failed. I think all of these institutions whether government not for profits corporations universities have have built up ways of doing business that have been enormously effective and That educate an awful lot of people very well that Entertain that inform. There's a media business that is extraordinarily successful in this country about investigating and about Revealing and and and otherwise Shining a light on on on the world in ways that are enormously important and are enormously valuable and We are very experienced at doing what we do and and it by and large do them very well because we are the some product of all that experience and Sometimes we do miss new opportunities There's no doubt about it because we're thinking about the world from the way that our experience has told us to think about it and new opportunities come out of left field that are enabled by new technologies or new ways of looking at the world and Because of the whatever particular lines we come to them that including the university lens that doesn't mean we're not doing what we Do well, but it means that we didn't see this new thing coming down the road When it comes to the system that created all those books and creates these movies and creates the television shows and music and all of that We put a value on having On our experience That there an economic incentive to create those things is a good thing That the elaborate structures That are involved and bringing together all the people and all the resources that it takes to make entertainment And to make media that people want to consume is a useful thing that people are willing to pay money for the products that we make and In the aggregate that's enough money that we can afford to make products that some of which are very inexpensive and some of which can be generated with a You know a camcorder or a camera at home and some of which require You know hundred million dollars to just to just to make a movie But let me just follow you for Accept your premise. Okay. All right now see if you will accept mine Imagine for me that somehow magically You are set down at this very moment in time with this very communication system that we have but no law right of copyright and You have to create the system from this moment forward Could we agree that you would not choose the existing system? I Think there are we could agree that the existing system has has issues in the way it works in this world I do agree with that. I think we would have created something that had many different features I do think that It's going back to your library example That the many books that were acquired in that library were the product of the labor of people who Did something they earn a living at it they feed themselves with the work that they do at least in part from creating these books and There's a set of legal expectations societal expectations that go around the fact that they are Their work it's up to them to decide Whether or not their work is going to be expansively available to everybody or whether their model is that they want to be able to Sell books to other libraries and they're not going to be able to do that if all that information in the library becomes Available publicly now they may make a decision. They want to put it all on Wikipedia or make it all available as the university certainly could Make that decision to make things available to the public or make it available to commons license or some other licensing regime That makes it more freely available But I still think that disrupting their settled expectations ultimately undermines People's willingness to make that effort in the first place that created those books and so looked at in the short run You say okay, there's a frustration around the fact that it's not easy to unlock those vaults in the longer term I think you have to say You know giving away somebody else's creativity for free Will undermine the library of 2100 that might otherwise exist if people could in fact organize themselves and feed themselves by By creating those works that reside in the library Esther I wonder if you'd agree with me on on this one of one of my one of my starting points is that the internet represents a true inflection point in communications history That is it changes defaults in a way that It changes the default The I don't know when we date it from but what the internet does is it starts you from an open space and You create private spaces within No longer is it like we start with our little private space and you go out I Agree with everything you said up to Your specific view of you start with an open space. Well, let me just state my question and then If it's true that that's the case then To me it means that Mike's the answer to Mike's argument Should be Yes, you're right. That's the way it's always been that would be true if things hadn't really changed But the fact that things really changed means that we ought to be in a hurry To change to accommodate it. We shouldn't be you know defending these expectations like crazy You should be out working with GBH to see if you can't figure out some way to make the Transaction cost go away You know, there are tons of examples of that happening. I can give you several YouTube okay, the record companies who were very strongly against You know anything other than point-to-point licensing a very expensive way have given YouTube site licenses that allow them to use their entire library of music And pay them based on usage. Hold on as to it. Yeah, if you're really going to start over Which was what your question was. I think there's a principle that if somebody Creates something They should be able to control its disposition Which means they can keep it entirely private But if they put it out into the public then they can try and control it by contract But they're usually much better business models than trying to control it by contract You may want a contract that simply allows you to collect advertising revenues associated with it or something like that Creative Commons there are really cool interesting new contracts that have been developed since 1994 or whenever and Those are absolutely a response to the changing dynamics the fundamental principle That the creator has control hasn't changed but the the economics of distribution The potential business models are so different the business model of the university is education and Some students paying and and some donors giving money But if there's this byproduct, that's all this wonderful information that will help educate the world and that will Add luster to your institutional reputation It wouldn't surprise me that both the donors and the students who pay for that education who go to school to be in The school and be taught face-to-face by professors would be delighted to see all that content Handed out to the rest of the world and made freely available and that's Beginning to be the case with far-thinking institutions if you look at what a business does it's very hard for a company like Viacom has all these cost centers to Figure out a new way to generate revenues because they don't know what to do with their cost centers and that's why Wikipedia was a startup. It wasn't a university department. It's why YouTube was a startup. It wasn't a subsidiary of Viacom I think We got to give Mike you well. I have it as on as it's willing to go. Okay. They got you. They had you down back up there So so here's some facts that might be true Over the last 20 years If you look at the internet or all communications networks and all content as just one big mush together sector over the last 20 years the price of all the hardware in that Network has continuously declined. That's what we call Moore's law per bit or per whatever per anything that any Any common metric that we would agree to and the price of software has stayed flat for about 20 years So that if you look at internet as a as a platform It means that the value or the price if you will of that platform has gradually shifted So that it used to be predominantly hardware and now it is overwhelmingly software Now is that is that good or bad? Well, one thing that that tells us is that that platform Isn't nearly as cheap and widely available as it would be if you had seen on the software side the same downward Curve that you've seen on the hardware side This is this is a non trivial reason why the take-up rate of the internet in emerging economies Isn't greater than it is and this is what in part Lennox's represents a response to So so is there a problem? Well, if you fundamentally Embrace creative destruction as a means for generating productivity gains which in turn produce A higher standard of living for a whole economy then you would say there is something wrong to your earlier question There is something wrong with a system of law with respect to software that doesn't produce the same productivity gains and software That we've seen with respect to hardware and while this isn't necessarily the same language that was used in the excellent previous panel It's not a different point from some of the points made in the previous panel user generated content is another word for no IPR Can I argue? The people I know in poor countries, it's not the cost of software that keeps them from getting online that the hardware still costs a lot if you're making a thousand dollars a year and Forgive me, but they're happy to use stolen software and it's Easily available. So it it is very much. It's the cost of The communication towers. It's the cost of the cell phone. It's the cost of the PC Yeah, Microsoft is out there selling, but it's it's really Not quite what you say well a Good a good response and there's some truth to what you're saying But if I may say so Take a look at Bollywood in India for example This is the most popular hardly at all distributed content that anyone has ever seen Why is that? It's the price The actual price of the delivery of that particular content in India is far higher than the ability of pay Ability to pay of the people in India that is not about the antennas and that is not about towers That is about and I'm this is a not a complete Rejection of your point. It is about the amalgam of the hardware of the distribution system and the price of the content Yeah, but but but it is not a it is not a trivial thing to say here's a whole culture that's built this Celebrated a kind of content and doesn't know how to deliver it to its own people a Big hit in India is not a movie that is seen by 1.3 billion people It's a movie that's seen by 30 million people in India. That's a big hit Yeah, so but something if you would that system if they all had computers they The movies would be much cheaper because you could make a ton of money selling 300 well the movies wouldn't be cheaper, but they would have more a margin But you might as well say if they all had spaceships Which case First I want to respond one of the things that Esther said about if you have any true facts we could use those two I'd try bear would like you It was Colbert who said that I don't like facts facts change in my opinion doesn't There are two things that Things that both of you said that I just thought from the business perspective Let me let me hit on the first on first is that I think it is wrong to think that business has kind of stayed static in the 1919 you know ancient 1990s business model and hasn't responded both to the Ease with which information is transmitted around the Internet In a whole ton of ways one is to the point that I was making before about licensing There are a lot of brand new efficient licensing models that have developed including privately negotiated blanket licenses, which are specifically designed to Reduce the transaction costs. So for example to your library example You know Certainly large amounts of that library are controlled in some fashion or another by a relatively small number of players who could easily The library could easily go to and say Let's talk about Making 10,000 volumes available on the internet. Let's figure out how we go about doing this There are absolutely ways to bring the transaction costs and we do it all the time And and as I mentioned for example a good example is YouTube where? for a lot of user-generated content sites music companies in some cases audio-visual companies like ourselves have made decisions that We can't be in a position of licensing every bit of every piece of content that we have and we need a more efficient way To develop economics associated with that but the second is that we have also developed enormous ways of getting our content out everywhere if you look at Viacom's We have a we have a website develop devoted to the daily show For example one point. It might have been a static website. You have to come there today Every clip of every show is on within hours sometimes within minutes of when it's on television in an embeddable way There's blogs associated with it people can write about it people can express their content They can take it with them and put it in all the different places that they are on the internet We are we're trying we're figuring out ways to Make the economic incentive and the costs associated with creating this content Available in as many possible ways and we think that enhances the value of what we do So if your book author was writing that book today Look people write books not because they want to lock up knowledge in the library people write books because they want Everybody to know what they have to say right? They think the thought is the thought that's embedded in the book is Intensive is immediately a public work the way they get compensated is because they spent time figuring how to express that thought And that's what's in your library not the knowledge itself And if people can figure out a way to get them that compensation for that that's a good thing But I also wanted to talk about the software. No, no you talked enough I want to say well, maybe I'll come back but First you're totally right about Colbert and the way It just goes up amazingly fast and yes, if I'm hearing you right You guys also sit on a huge long tail of stuff that you can't get through this transaction grid Am I not right about that isn't just what you're saying seems so right to me that you have to deal with Transaction costs by wrapping bigger and bigger packages, but we are I mean you are so for example You know this is getting into our canna But we have to clear music publishing songwriters get paid whenever you have a piece of music that's embedded in your content It used to be that every piece of music that we had to clear We had to make a phone call to somebody who then had to make a decision and decide whether the use was now We have a rate card our Production people go in and they just pull the different piece of music based on the rate They compensate a big publishing company. It's a very efficient process And we are using that process. There are still sticking points. There's still content that you know In 1957 somebody wrote a song the copyright belongs with this estate Nobody knows because there's a fine issue of legal work about whether these three people or those four people control the rights That happens, but I'd say that is very definitely in the minority and most of the time There's a very simple and clean way to procure the rights people don't always like the price well But that's a different question. There's a way to get it done. That's efficient. Let me just end this segment with a plea the Situation of the collective public media companies which I think of as a combination of the universities and The public broadcasting stations and public radio and so forth This is a tremendous problem and we recognize that from the corporate side Somehow it has to make sense in money terms. It's just otherwise we're We're not in reality and yet I think there is tremendous mutual interest In really getting to work on working it through there is there is some hurry. Yeah, we agree with that Actually and for example one of the hate to go on but what one of the problems that people have been dealing with is How do you get access to a movie that's protected by digital rights management when you want to teach a class Or comment on a class in a blog or some such and there's an effort going on right now Specifically designed around that about you know, this problem has been identified How do we make sure that those rights and there's an easy way to be available and you know There was a there was a attempt in the early days to kind of do an end run that we don't you know We should just be able to break the break the locks because we want access to what's inside the safe There's a productive approach. We're trying really hard to listen. We care about what people think and we also care about all these values We're we're trying to work with people specifically for that to make it easy It may be free and maybe very low cost but an easy way to get inside there and do what needs to be done and You know as these problems come up. You'll see the the MPAA is working with people on orphan works act Again a problem identified at academia, but in which you know, we we come around and the friendly folks are the MPAA and RIA You'll be you'll be surprised. I am I listen nice people I Want to come to you on a question back to hardware If you think in terms of university And I'm delighted if university becomes not just university, but whole wikipedia culture of common knowledge That is university writ large in some sense if you see us Flourishing in the net as I think it's possible to imagine It's possible to imagine Universities catching on to the fact that they missed the boat on wikipedia and that the really is a whole new frontier of invention For ways in which to communicate education to an open public Suppose we we do that It depends it seems to me so much on this PC that Jonathan Zittrain talked about this morning and as the universe of PCs dwindles into Tivos as he paints his picture and into mobile phones Where the only thing the kids actually have is Something that Verizon puts out. I I feel a threat from that. I feel like In some way this connected internet with open PCs is almost like a unique world for university And if we don't somehow capture it now and build a real base under it to protect it We lose it. Does that make sense from what you know about the telecommunications? wire industry so So what happened to the record industry is happening to the newspaper industry and What's happening to the newspaper industry is probably what will happen to elite universities? Now the reason that I'm and you thought this morning was negative No, no, that's positive Charlie That's positive an institution and I want you to know I'm honored to be admitted here Even on only this contingent and provisional and temporary basis But Any institution with 38 billion dollars in the bank? That is spending on its operating budget less than 20% of what it earns every year Obviously doesn't feel at some center of command that it knows what to do with its money in order to enhance its fundamental mission And it isn't dividend ending the money out And so the question that's being begged by this is a nice point It should pay its professors more Well that that's actually part of the problem, but The the the the obvious fact I think from just looking at the P&L of the top 50 universities in the United States is that they haven't decided How to redefine their mission for the 21st century because that's what it means when you're holding that much cash That's what it means, you know, there's no endgame here unless the university is Midas to the infinite degree So so we know that a new mission is needed now. It's not like there's any shortage of candidates for grand missions You know just for starters, there's about six and a half billion people in the world who absolutely need education Or they cannot learn again an income that meets the most minimal living standards. That's not a new fact But that's the first fact where the world's educational institutions actually have the capability Today, it's the first time that they have the capability to attack that fact in any kind of scale So Yale, which is I'm sure second to Harvard in many respects except law school Sorry It nevertheless is a school that I went to and so I can say this about it Which is a Yale 150 years ago was the first major institution to make an effort to transfer Western knowledge to China But when we look at the results of that over a hundred and fifty years They've been eclipsed in the last one and a half years of efforts by American universities to transfer education to China Meaning there's not one American business school that is not in some way or another involved in the training of management in China The way American business schools are training management in China is not replicated by any other part of the academy As far as I know it is a transactional business where the costs are lowered and the output is Maximized and the people are brought in and a profit is made but not that big a one and the goal is being accomplished China is probably 30 to 50 million Managers short of what it needs to have in order to have an economy of a truly world-class standard So that's a that's a sector of the academy that has seen a mission That is mobilized around achieving it and it's a very broad-scale effort. So so Therefore that's the question presented for every other part of the academy whether we're talking about health or science or even law But let me just hold you up on that read When you talk about a mission of bringing Western knowledge to China It it's wonderful. It sounds great But the open access mission Defines itself in terms of bringing in not just to China But to bringing it to anyone anywhere in the world who can reach an internet node For free Open education. There's a difference between information and content and the process of helping someone to teach themselves Which is very people-intensive especially the first parts Helping children learn making sure they don't get squashed Making sure they have enough to eat while they go to school and that's that's where the real challenge is the the business schools will take care of themselves but the real challenge is how do you Go out into the world and maybe train the teachers but Start right at the beginning because you can't simply slap the university education on top of someone who doesn't know how to read So there is a mission, but I don't think it's But let me it begins earlier. Let me accept what you said. I totally agree. You can't just slap the university education on but if you turn it around the other way you say suppose the idea is that there's a potential audience out there of Anyone who can reach a note on the net? So the idea is can one produce some form of education that would be interesting enough It's true in the virtual world. The stick is virtual but then we hear about the group activity that rises spontaneously on the net with kids who will Form new kinds of networks in order to play games Well, what's a game? I Play poker my friend Kevin who's spoken up here Kevin From Jamaica Berkman fellow has come here to these Berkman conferences now Maybe this is the third one and each time he's been Impressed he's gone home impressed with what he describes as a way of thinking a way of thinking and he's asked me to come to Jamaica now and see if we can't teach Berkman way of thinking to Jamaica as a developing nation project Somehow a mixture of going there for real and having net connections and being in second life and teaching games and It seems doable it doesn't seem it doesn't we just made we're gonna do it So yes, not from the root of saying all right now impose an education, but from the root of Universities looking at this is a whole new challenge, how would you interest Kids anywhere in the world who can get to a net with open content that would engage their minds and draw their intelligence towards university That doesn't see it doesn't seem like it's impossible So back to my question Suppose we're doing this is that something you can do with Verizon in control of the telephone and the telephone the handset that's Wireless no longer the wire net no longer the PC is The developing world which doesn't go with you know high-end max It goes with cell phones is that is that a barrier that somehow? Just means we're not gonna get there So at least you know this is the United States So we do everything good to excess and as a result You know we have a cable network and a telephone network, but in virtually all of the developing world There's only the equivalent of Verizon right In Historically speaking and in most countries. It's a state-owned company and in most countries The history is that its purpose Had nothing to do with education Or really even tying society together in any particular way But we are and I think you know maybe everyone here knows this really well and probably most people here know it in more detail than I do the the big change just in the last two years is that it now is crystal clear that virtually everyone in the world will have access to the internet in less than 15 years and number two for the overwhelming majority of People it will be a wireless connection Now There's no doubt whatsoever that for a variety of reasons that Esther and others can explain better than I You would rather in the United States have glass fiber to your eyeballs than using Spectrum because then you could watch 80 channels of Viacom and high death But that really doesn't matter because the larger point is the one that you're getting to I think and that is We're not we're single-digit years away from combinations of 50 10 a hundred a million two million five million people in South Africa or India or even the United States Being able to interact in a way to demand education Not just to have it spoon-fed out to them This is a very profound change. Is it a is it a challenge back to the year earlier question to to? To the great university centers of the world absolutely It doesn't mean that they are going to be recreated as is I don't think we'll see a 40 billion dollar endowment South African University But it does mean that most people in the world won't care about recreating that exact model and we'll find new and in just use the phrase collaborative models for Learning about and learning with each other. This is very very exciting You know for the universities that have 100 200 300 and 400 years behind them or the English universities even even longer It's either get ahead of this parade or be relegated to some totally distinctive and idiosyncratic Fundamentally deep research activity because you won't be part of the cutting edge of how people are learning Yes, sir. I want to tell two stories about the real world that I've observed and One is when I was in India in Bangalore. I went to visit the local Microsoft research group This they had all kinds of cool stuff, but the thing that really impressed me was something called the multi mouse Which is a little bit of software on a computer and what it does is it? Multi channels the USB port so you can stick a single USB Device into the USB port and it connects to eight mice Each of which is individual so you can eight children at the computer and One will have a blue circle and one will be a green circle or whatever and they can they can play games They can select dancers and suddenly where you used to have the typical scene was you had a computer You had a class of maybe 15 or 20 you had one big boy who had the computer About five people crowding behind the big boy to look and then the other kids were left out With the multi mouse you have eight children using the computer and if you're lucky, maybe you have two or three computers Microsoft did that as research, but it's it's a market kind of thing They want more kids to learn how to use computers They want more kids to be exposed to windows and they're investing a whole lot of money in making that happen Netnet I think that's a really good thing There are lots of little interesting things going on around the edges, but I've watched Microsoft invest in emerging markets They want people to be educated and it's working the second story I was in South Africa some time ago. Well, it was about a summer and a half ago and Talking to your counter your former counterpart Reed and a whole bunch of different government people And what they have there? most of the countries I've been to there's sort of one incumbent phone Company that's usually owned by the brother of whoever's in power and Then there are a couple of international cell phone companies trying to come into the market and They're in a joint venture with the cousin of whoever's in power But it's you know, it's sort of starting to open up so here in South Africa there was the incumbent and I asked if it was possible For somebody who had an internet connection which costs some huge amount $100 or $200 a month to share that with his neighbors through a Wi-Fi hotspot and Took a little bit of time for this question to be understood But then the general response was yes, I think that That should be allowed. That's actually a nice idea will help make it more accessible and then I said but if Telco in its contracts forbade that would that be against your law and There was a lot of uncertainty about that But there was again a general feeling that this would be a good thing So we had a press conference the next day and I said look I can't Talk about the private discussions we had but I can't say that I have it. I'm pretty good authority that you should go forth and buy Little wireless routers and share with your neighbors and if you want to charge them or help cover the cost That's great. Go ahead and do it and it caused quite a stir But the the saddest thing was I got a letter from somebody saying that this was a Really bad idea because it was the government's job To make access cheaper it should not be done by the private sector. It was a public utility. So the point of the story is That things are really messed up and that in many cases government is the problem they Typically telecom is a huge source of tax revenue. It's a source of revenue for the minister's brother and They don't notice that if they Cut the prices in half They would more than double the revenues, but that's that's what really needs to happen. So competition and deregulation and Forgive me universities are I would say bit players in this Need to go out and open up these Channels and these communication networks and make them cheaper so that the hardware as well as the software is Affordable to a lot more people well eager to hear your questions Get you involved in this discussion. I Love to be able to pass around the microphone I thought that the way you're high-ended his last session by Saying here. We're here. We're here What do we do about it? I thought that was just right So where's What do we do? What am I supposed to do point? Points here. I point right to David Margulin front row I dare if I knew that I wouldn't have pointed to you No, no, please David you should understand was a student of mine Who participated with another student of mine Tom Smuts in putting together an interdisciplinary faculty seminar? That allowed us to learn something about the net which led to the Formation of the Berkman Center. We but when David was here. That was pre-Berkman Or yeah founding Berkman Center at your office and it wasn't just the faculty seminars a lot of students too Right me is that this is pretty Terry so but Terry was not that far away. It was just a 20 feet down the hall and Of our guests, but also I guess I'm asking this question Sort of not only of the future but grounded in the past. So I'll set the context I've had I guess a fortnight to think about what I wanted to ask and the context I wanted to ask it in which you know as Johnson opines sort of a celebration like this Concentrates the mind wonderfully. This isn't gonna be too long. Is it? No, try not to be I'll try to be quick, but well, I mean it can be as quick as it needs to be I guess that To use Esther's words, how do we welcome strangers if we take Terry's question of the morning as You know, there's a war going on outside. There's a battle raging and we're picking up our swords and brandishing our sabers and We know where the battle lines are drawn And we've had 10 12 years of thinking about the issues and we're sort of right on target We know where these fault lines are and we're fighting the good fight and you know I as well as the next founder. I'm ready to get up and go to my loins and my lines of code If that's true and I accept that premise, right? I don't know how many of you also do but if that's true How do we then find our way to beat those swords into plowshares and shovels and not just on the odd conference But as a persistent basis Welcome strangers to hear the other voices beyond these hallowed halls and make sort of finding the questions Unless we think there's the same questions and same issues for the next 10 years We think they're gonna be different issues. How do we go about other than this one-off sort of Thursday afternoon? Welcoming these other voices as we did in that seminar as we've done at the beginning How do we do that now and sort of you know, but what it's worth How do we sort of stop children? What's that sound and hear that sound and look what's going down? All right, let me give you a fast answer and we'll get on to the next question the big news of Berkman a 10 as far as I'm concerned is Harvard open access The fact that Harvard has gone open access That's news. That's news of a kind that changes Everybody takes notice Elsevier takes notice other universities take notice action Doesn't have to be I mean what this this open access move here at Harvard. Let me just describe it for a moment to you. I regard it as elegant it Lawyerly exquisite This was a motion. Oh, I shouldn't do this Terry. You should do this This was a motion Well, first of all, this is something that started Well, I'd say started with Mike Carroll calling names Mike Carroll Eric Saltsman the crowd of people that are now science commons I commons Steve Hyman our provost heard them He appointed Stuart Schieber who was one of our faculty advisors in the Berkman Center from the engineering school to head a faculty committee and Stuart crafted with help with all sorts of help a a Statute a law a motion for the faculty of arts and sciences that our scholarly work first in the faculty of arts and sciences now in our faculty our scholarly work should be Licensed to Harvard for deposit in an open repository open access and He Put this forward in a way that was so artful so well explained so careful that it was voted unanimously in the faculty of arts and sciences and then Terry and John Palfrey took the same lead along with Robert Dorton our librarian here in our faculty Law faculty and it'll go through the faculties So when you think of it a small act, but amazingly well crafted and well executed and Yes, something that changes shows the default is different when people get the idea that the default is different Then what does it mean that Harvard has gone open access? It can be looked at in the narrowest of terms. It's just my articles I don't write many I don't make any money from them. It's of no consequence whatsoever But if you turn it around and say no no, there's a culture change that's taken place here There's a recognition of a new culture and Let's call it a Wikipedia culture Then that is something and that can spread as fast as the internet spreads. So next question Go down here. I Identify yourself Phil Hanbaker Stan, okay Strikes me listening to the latter half of the conversation There are two problems you could have addressed and you seem to have chosen the easy one Which is how do you talk to the rest of the world? How do you broadcast your ideas? Well, you know Paris Hilton does really quite well at that That's not difficult When I was involved in the White House Publications project at MIT they gave us two problems One was how we would get the presidential press releases out onto the internet the second one there was mass listening How do we listen to all those people who have ideas that they want to express to the president? How do we get that input in and it seems to me that the idea of Harvard, you know talking off to the Dictating to the Chinese and lecturing them that doesn't seem to be very interesting, but How about if you could listen to all those people? Now that would be a game-changer and within the Academy How about getting the science department to listen to the arts department? I Yes, pass it back there. That's a great one pass it back to there. Oh That was not gonna answer come on the question is great if anybody wants to answer I'm delighted, but let's get some more questions in Tell us who you are My name is Sarah Weidemann from behavioral economics consulting group in Philadelphia I Want to go back to your comment about teaching the Jamaicans to serve the Berkman approach and then I want to bookmark that and Mention a couple things by way of context One is that a couple years ago. I read an article about how a mathematician flying over West Africa had taken photos of the village layout and of the patterns the designs that the that they braided women's hair and So forth and he was looking at them looking at them and he looked at them You know normally they had been thought of as primitives and the third time he looked at him He said that's fractal geometry And it turns out that in fact they were expressions of fractal geometry And I want to point out to you that math did come from that part of the world Okay, so zero comes from India Numbers we use are called Arabic numerals so in any event I Want to mention that and then I want to mention that any random Ethiopian cab driver that I have ever gotten in That person's cab speaks Five to seven languages and if you think about it learning a new language is one of the hardest things to do particularly as an adult So going back to the Jamaican question I would suggest that the best way to teach the Berkman approach to the Jamaicans would be first to go and learn the Jamaican approach Well, you'll be happy to know You'll be happy to know that we started in Jamaica in 1998 and we've been listening since then We went with no idea at all except that internet might be helpful in Jamaica and We waited for them to identify a project to us we said maybe the internet can amplify but the the source has got to come from Jamaica and After two years they identified a program in the Kingston prisons a rehabilitation program and Induced us to come down and look at it We did we have helped not with money. I have to say but we've helped just by being Participants and travel expense in building a computer lab. That's been the source of Development program that has led to a radio station and they now want to continue with There's already tremendous video editing and so forth programs, but they're now interested in going further So Kevin has invited me down. So I don't mean to come off as somehow Amazingly arrogant about Harvard University and so forth screwing it that way I Spent part of my formative years living in West Africa and so I'm aware of how incredibly sophisticated Some of the communications mechanisms that they have for example the drums is wire. That's wireless communication and I Think if you think of technology is simply a tool that can enable the expression of some things that are sort of I have to use a Psychological term egocentonic it means it's a me experience within a culture Ego dystonic means a not me experience So if you the internet can enable a sort of an egocentonic experience that not only makes adoption Quicker easier and etc. But actually you get to see something new that you hadn't thought of before You know, I also I want to just add one thought to this concept of listening, which is you know in defense business Business and the for-profit community and some of the things that you think about one of things the internet has done for all of us Is given us a like a much more efficient way, right? At least within narrow lenses of figuring out what people want to be doing on the internet where a product acceptance cycle might have taken years previously An experience that's an internet experience can go from zero to you know 50 million uniques in six months and pretty rapidly you figure out whether what you're doing is something that Consumers are responding to what the public is responding to whether you've hit something that people in whatever that complicated Constellation is the things that people want to experience once you have Attracted something that attracts a large number of people. You know it right away And that's something that we wanted are very carefully and is a big part of what we do Can I ask it? I can I ask a question about listening? I think this is a very important topic My question is can anyone help me put it in the context of governing? So one thing exciting for someone like me who lives in the Washington area a mile and a half from where I lived when I was in high school One thing very exciting for me is that we're going to have a new government in January And It sounds like that alone draws enough consensus that we should put it on Wikipedia so So, you know as I've been involved in this particular Campaign The one thing I've heard for the last two years is well, we really hope that your guy wins I'm a note on the Obama team. We really hope your guy wins, but boy does he have a lot of problems How was he ever going to solve them? Well suppose that we actually Said you know just as he's been saying in his speeches A lot of these solutions are not supposed to be dictated by him But are supposed to come up from or come from the people suppose that we took him at his word What does it actually mean in terms of government process? Because I can't tell you how many times the other thing I'm always told is well You know, you just have to make sure you're not responding to the popular will You've got to do what's best for the people in the long run even if they don't know what it is Well, these are not these are not trivial questions one thing I can tell you from my experience of being around politicians is There's a form of listening that they do really really well They are Polling day and night around the clock they know more about audience reaction than anyone except Viacom and maybe it's tied So that's not I think the kind of listening that you all are really talking about right in exquisite Sensitivity to the second-by-second, you know shifts an opinion based on what's been on YouTube But what kind of listening do we want? To see here and are we able to get the voices speaking to the really hard naughty problems in a way that makes the listening worthwhile? So that's two different questions. I'm trying to ask how do you listen to the Actually tough Answers to tough problems and then more generally How do you sort out and all the noise the great thing to listen to about the national goals and the national priorities? If if you're Obama, let's start with him There's some presumption That you're smart and so in addition to listening It would be a waste for him just to listen and then not do anything So the trick is to listen and understand what people are saying and then to respond in a way That is both true not truthy But true and meaningful Much as he did with the gas tasks. God bless him. I think One way to listen to people is Not to pander to them Not simply to feed back to them what they said but to say This is what I hear you saying But let me put it together with this other thing that you might not have thought of about how economics works or the fact that If you want your children to be better educated then you'd better Stop them watching TV all the time except for maybe some of the biocom programs Yeah, I think people want someone who listens to them, but doesn't humor them and That that's what listening really means. It doesn't mean or good listening. It doesn't mean agreeing it means understanding somebody's point of view, but then perhaps Exposing them to new information So I tell you what it strikes me from a law school perspective I've been impressed with how oppositional our Style of discourse is We teach it. No, no, you're wrong. No. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly So so our idea of having a discourse has actually become having an argument and What we don't see we don't actually see people Listening and understanding that what you can actually see that when it happens somebody makes a point and the other person actually gets it This is like amazing. That's what you don't see and I I hope that we could inculcate a discourse to me Okay, it comes back to what the Berkman Center is about the Berkman Center is as much about a style of discourse as anything else It if if one could use the integrated media space that now opens up through internet to Propagate what I consider to be the genuine law school style of discourse that involves truly listening and Responding that would be the goal of the Berkman Center as far as I'd be concerned that would be real education That would be great Wendy you have some questions from off the Yes, thank you. So I've got some questions from our question tool and IRC channel and some of them actually coming around to Discussion you were just having of what what is education? Is it knowledge or the bits or is it the? the relationships and Formed around those bits and I Think what's what is it that we're protecting with copyright? What where does copyright come from and is it price or control or how do we redefine that as we're thinking about these more relational emotions And then from our crowd of librarians and particularly from jessamine Why the libraries keep on getting mentioned as the counter example or what we need to get away from what's wrong with libraries? And aren't they providing great material that we need to figure out how to to enhance Well, I'll take the last one first To me the the perception of library Library of the future the library of the future is the net The library my library right now is the net. I think it's for the most part The net and so the idea that somehow we want to get away from library is not it at all It's that we want to open the library It's like we'd like to take the sign off the front of Weidner that says you have to have a Harvard card to somehow get in Yeah, I on the copyright one. I knew you think I'd go there the One of the things I think about as copyright is it actually relates to this whole listening conversation in the world of economics and transactions Copyright is the way that consumers communicate with people as to what they actually want to receive and what they value and When so what what our business is essentially do nobody we can't force anybody to go listen any of our products or buy any of our Products or come in they make that decision totally on their own It's how they tell us that that's what they'd like us to be producing and that's what they'd like us to be creating and when you eliminate that form of communication through You know through piracy or through other kinds of ways that people take stuff without Paying for it. They never we never get that piece of communication that this is actually it's something something people value And it never gets produced in the first place Yes, but people will go to somebody's concert. They'll buy their t-shirt. They'll put money in their chip jar They they'd rather give it to the artist than to buy a calm On many cases many cases. We are the artist in many cases. We are the The the the enterprise that has financed the artist that has promoted the artist But in many enterprises, I mean in music, it's a little simpler. You see a singer songwriter and they're finding an audience In the context for example to make a motion picture It is bringing together an enormous constellation of artists writers producers Photographers set makers costume designers all these people into a single enterprise That is enormously complicated and it seems to me that a Concert is a great experience and people will pay to go to concerts But so is listening to music on a CD and so is listening to music on a computer And so is watching a movie in a movie theater and they're not mutually exclusive and that if there is an audience for a Particular kind of product then that ought to get produced to those people who are interested in that particular Experience and not force them into some other experience because that's you know the only one that's left after You know kind of the the chaos in some ways that has dissipated the ability of people to to actually serve a need All right, um right here if I can All right My name is very Malkowski. I have a question. I think for rest of course. She mentioned the government that should be taking care of the Lowering the prices of the other guys said that I did yeah, and I have two examples actually I mean, I understand that your experience here is based on the US government Which we all hope for the sake of the world that you're gonna change in January That if we don't it'll really be weird If you don't I'm not a citizen, so I'm easy But the question is the following the European Commission is a kind of a government However, it's the only government that was able to go successfully against the Microsofts of this world It's the only government that government that was able to lower the prices of the Phone calls in within the European Union the cellular the cell phone calls So isn't there a like a middle way because in the US you rely on private initiative, you know and At the same time I live in New York City There are only two internet service providers and they both provide the same service at the same price And they don't allow competition because they probably love it a government which doesn't allow People like we do in Bulgaria to put cables between the houses and just have a hundred megabit connection at home for $10 So how do you actually solve this problem with the government in the US? Which is supposed to give to give an example to the rest of the world I mean, how are you gonna do that transition between what's currently and what it should be? So, you know millions of words have been written and and many of them have been read on the subject of Microsoft litigation and and there are some people in America that believe that if Redmond were in Germany Then there wouldn't be any European investigation into Microsoft But there are other people that disagree What I well the one thing I would say is that among the many of agreements among nations that doesn't exist is one about a global competition in Software in content in in pretty much anything that isn't just a function of the United States is Hopefully temporary unwillingness to engage in treaty discussions That's a function of a very very long-term unwillingness on the part of the United States or any other nation to seed any form of economic regulation to any other country which the European Community example is the only a significant example in the last 500 years, you know to speak to the contrary. So so are we going to see any kind of International economic compact and the the test is clearly about a global warming. That's clearly the test If we are able to reach an international understanding about global warming, we're not going to have any other Problems that seem insurmountable to us. That's going to be the single Highest aspiration and hardest thing that nations have ever tried to do collectively When that thank you my abuga time. We finally live in time when global library Like global digital Alexandria and library is possible Unless there would be copyright So I return to the question that Charlie post If we would have to think of a new default rule in copyright Would it be the same this system that we have now and Before you mentioned that copyright is a system of communication I was I was taught that Copyright is a system that gives incentive to create not a system that lower raises transactions costs or stimulated designing new licenses and and things like that. So my question would be We should I think we should change this default rule and not impose More transaction costs on those who create without this necessary system of incentive who create anyway So I would like that you Michael answer the question again If you would have to choose Would you impose this copyright system again? The answers yes, I think I think copyright is essential as you say it's an incentive for people to create It is it and I added that it is a way that people who would like to see things created People who would like to get a newspaper people would like to watch a movie people would like to hear a song people would like to Be involved with culture to communicate that fact So that people who would like to produce it creators Have a way to earn a living to to to engage in economic activity to serve that need That library would not exist and the next library won't exist Unless there is that ability of people who produce that work to get compensated for that I also believe very deeply and fundamentally that In those that aggregate of individual transactions that individual songwriters and singers and And all kinds of creative people engage in with their audiences Is by far the best way not a perfect way But it's the best way to make sure that those free markets are the best way to assure that there is a robust Creation of new works and new forms of creativity Come from the other direction Take the hypothetical seriously you're set down in this current world there's no transactional system It doesn't exist and you're gonna start out or a little bit of wine It would seem natural that if your present inclination is to start Lowering the transaction costs of the existing system by making bigger and bigger clumps That if you take it all the way to the extreme You're gonna make a big clump Well, you're not gonna you're not gonna build transaction costs into a System a world where the essence of it is the fluidity of communication. I agree with that Okay, and I don't think there's anything in copyright that mandates transaction costs I think as you're creating works today For example, I would be a wonderful system if somebody could create a way to incorporate metadata in every piece of content And had a clearing system where somebody could automate they say I want all these rights and know immediately what they cost and how to procure them There's things that are happening in that regard in a limited way There's a system in publishing they've developed some some data called a cap that does this in the publishing world Releases the first step of providing you with the information about who to pay how to get the rights what the rights are that you want to get I think that People should do a lot. This is Harvard. You guys are really smart figure out a way to bring the transaction costs down That's good for everybody that helps creators that helps users It helps everybody to bring the transaction costs down But don't abandon the market or don't say because this has already been created on the premise of one system Because it's valuable to me to use it I'm just gonna ignore that system and use it the way that I want to use it It's that's not part of the compact that that that the producers Had when they decided to create the system. All right, let's do two more questions and then we're gonna quit and be right on time Hold on. Let's bring a mic down Right here. Yeah, let's start with this gentleman up here. Sorry. Excuse me. Let me just start with this gentleman right here So my question stand up Jordan Pollack Brandeis University. My question for the panel is Given that wicket's pedia has displaced Britannica That Linux is competitive with Windows What do you see coming from mass produced? Very large-scale movies produced distributively over the web which can essentially present the threat to Hollywood style of Production which requires people to give up their their copyrights to a Commercial entity It might my answer that to speak is anything coming that I should be waiting to watch Well, there's lots of great stuff coming that you should want a lot of people are a lot of people I'm not aware of that. I'm not aware of that particular collaboration, but I'm in favor of it You know, I think that that that there is a system that has worked great in software that works great in content I mean look at YouTube there is there is There's bottoms up creativity that shouldn't be bottled and shouldn't be foreclosed By companies like mine. I think our What we do well is competitive. It's different and they should both coexist just as there is a Software protected world and there is an open content world and they both have roles and And they both coexist pretty well I think if the idea is that there's value in you and doing this work in a public Cooperative way and you get benefits back from that and that's the world That is in the interest of the particular person who's participating. It's a great system And I would love to see a movie You don't see any threat coming from from that direction at this point I Don't see a top-down studio. I don't see a threat in coming in that direction now I think that what we produce Requires a very high degree of organization And a high degree of speed that at least up until now I've only seen in the way that we produce some of those things, but if there are Other motion pictures or other television shows or they're certainly our television shows. Absolutely. There's music There's all kinds of content that Small team of three people can do anything. I'm talking about, you know a team of 2,000 doing something. I think that would be fabulous Esther just really briefly. I think each Each one of these little dichotomies if you like has has its own particular flavor and I think here the The new form is more likely to be something acted and then sponsored by a Family foundation or a rich person who just wants it out there the real challenge for movies is not one side is the production and You know, you're not going to create an epic about the Egyptian Pharaoh and his army, but you can Create very nicely a small drama Then the challenge is getting it into distribution and that's where the internet is going to change things once again Most of what you see on YouTube is short-form, but there are now things showing up that are much longer form And that's that's going to be interesting. I don't think it's going to be quite the same as some of these other markets But there's some stuff coming Well, all right, I'm going to bring this to a close. It's been a lovely day. I Am delighted with where it's come. I wanted to thank Esther and read especially for contributing to our new Publius project and much much appreciated and Thank you all for coming and participating with us and I hope you enjoy the food for thought dinners and the rest of the conference So thank you. Thank you