Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to

other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you. Today is March 24, 2010 and my guest is Yochai Banklor, the Berkman

professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard and faculty co-director of the Berkman

Center for Internet and Society Yochai. Welcome to Econ Talk.

Nice to be with you. What is the most crucial issue facing the future of the Internet?

That's a big question.

That's a big question. There are different questions with regard to the future of the Internet,

generally globally, future of particular Internet communications here in the U.S. Overall,

I would say that the critical question is whether in the transition to the next generation of

connectivity, the net will continue to be as open, creative, distributed in terms of institutional,

cultural, economic, entrepreneurial forms as it has been in the last 15 or more years, or whether

the process of maturation will end up normalizing to a slower innovation, more structured and

concentrated cultural information production system. What do you think is the threat to that

openness that you'd like and that all of us would like?

I would look at several technological potential change points in different places. I would look at

potential legal change points and as a result of those organizational change points.

There's a lot to work through and I'll try to do it in a way that's structured.

The basic driver of what makes the net so innovative and creative and fast-moving is the low cost

of effective action. Experimentation, adaptation, failure, very, very cheap failure. Essentially,

...