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these technologies tend to suck up all available bandwidth. Napster—at least while threatened with extinction—was an example of this use. University systems were overburdened as student accounts became public servers. There is some fear that a generalized Gnutella system would similarly consume bandwidth. But for this technical problem there are technical solutions. And betterimplemented peer-to-peer technologies should better balance demand and supply. What is certain, however, is that they provide a kind of innovation that would not have been possible without the commons of the Net.
in each of these stories the lesson is the same. The platform of the Internet removes real-space barriers; removing these barriers enables individuals with ideas to deploy those ideas. The architecture is different; the innovation it encourages is therefore different. This encouragement comes from a number of sources. First: Because of the commons at the code layer, there is no cop on the block. The Net does not enable control; in this sense, it therefore encourages those ideas that would have been blocked by a system of control. Where many people have to sign on before a project gets going, the opportunity for irrational vetoes becomes quite great (corporations protecting their vision of the market; management restricting how much they want their departments to change). Second: Because access to the physical layer is so inexpensive, the market linked to this commons is vast. The market for solar-powered Beanie Babies might be quite small in relative terms. But if the market is the whole world, then the Net would encourage what otherwise could not be sustained. Third: Because of the character of the code layer, there is an opportunity to exploit a resource that is prohibitively expensive in real space, save for the very large organization—data. Top-down advertising is replaced by bottom-up marketing, which in turn makes it easier for creators without great backing to enter the channel of distribution.33 The innovations that I have described flow from the environment the Net is. The environment is a mix of control and freedom. It is sensitive to changes in that mix. If the constraints on the content layer are increased, innovation that depends upon free content will be restricted. If the access guaranteed by a commons at the code layer becomes conditioned or restricted, then innovation that depends upon this access will be threatened.