A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?

Abstract

This Essay argues that we need a politics, or perhaps a political economy, of intellectual property.Using the controversy over copyright on the Internet as a case study and the history of the environmental movement as a comparison, it offers a couple of modest proposals about what such a politics might look likewhat theoretical ideas it might draw upon, and what constituencies it might unite. I. "CODE IS CoDE"-THE LOGIC OF THE INFORMATION RELATIONEveryone says that we are moving to an information age.Everyone says that the ownership and control of information is one of the most important forms of power in contemporary society.These ideas are so well-accepted, such, clich6s, that I can get away with saying them in a law review without footnote support.(For those blessedly unfamiliar with law reviews, this is a status given to only the most staggeringly obvious claims; the theory of evolution 1 and the orbit of the earth around the sun 2 probably would not qualify.)