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the individuals who own intellectual property rights. That somehow, WIPO’s objective should be to stop an individual from “waiving” or “disclaiming” an intellectual property right. That the interest of WIPO is not just that intellectual property rights be maximized, but that they also should be exercised in the most extreme and restrictive way possible. There is a history of just such a property system that is well known in the Anglo-American tradition. It is called “feudalism.” Under feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong interest in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control to the free market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration. It fought any freedom that might interfere with that control. As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the choice we are now making about intellectual property.10 We will have an information society. That much is certain. Our only choice now is whether that information society will be free or feudal. The trend is toward the feudal. When this battle broke, I blogged it. A spirited debate within the comment section ensued. Ms. Boland had a number of supporters who tried to show why her comments made sense. But there was one comment that was particularly depressing for me. An anonymous poster wrote, George, you misunderstand Lessig: He’s only talking about the world as it should be (“the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should be to promote the right balance of intellectualproperty rights, not simply to promote intellectual property rights”), not as it is. If we were talking about the world as it is, then of course Boland didn’t say anything wrong. But in the world
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