Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas

Lessig has a difficult task. He has to present an argument that most market fundamentalists will find sacreligous, but strongly position himself as pro-market. I am not sure how much of his self-confessed "virulently-pro market" attitude is effected for the sake of this particular audience, or if he is being strategic to keep them from dumping him into the "end of history" pile that lay underneath their pulpits.

Either way, intentionally or not, he is basically asking for us to allow a sliver of socialism to persist--one in which there is a certain anarchy (qua freedom) allowed to continue in the realm of the internet and other new technological innovations. He has compelling arguments for why this is necessary and avoids the kind of history that people like Mattelart or McChesney have written where they recognize the way that every technology of communication--regardless of how communally developed it was--eventually became colonized, enclosed by one economic and political interest group at the expense of others. But what he does focus on is the history of the communal development of the internet, foretelling the coming enclosure of these commons and its subsequent dessication and commodification. He is basicially sounding a warning bell.

Overlooks other types of value creation--that all value is, for the most part a social creation. much of history of capitalism has placed the holder of values at the top of the totem pole, overlooks risks taken by others in the production process

More here on the way that value is changing--as the production has become globalized and the only power north holds is over the intellectual property, this becomes the central stake in the struggle--much harder to keep enclosed.

He is right that this will be a central stake in the struggle of the next century and he is basically asking the market fundamentalists to resist making it so while at the same time subtly encouraging the rest of us to resist this commodification (maybe, though I'm not done. I assume he will have some sort of call to action.)