IP: Bruce Sterling closing CFP Speech

"The supposed explosion of digital creativity

on a million websites and a thousand channels... Well,

come 2002, it boils down to 95% market share by a single

ruthless feudal empire! And you wonder where your

excitement's gone? A thing like Linux... that isn't a

competitive free-market innovation, that thing is like a

slave revolt.



But it gets weirder. The public interest in public-

domain intellectual property freezes dead with the humble

birth of a cartoon mouse on a tabletop in Kansas City. The

Mouse is flash-frozen in legal ice. He's unrotting. He's

undying. He's cryogenically preserved.... In ancient

Rome, folks thought it was pretty decadent when the

Emperor Caligula made his horse into a Senator. But in

the modern US Senate, there's a Senator who's a cartoon

mouse!"