"Protectionism Will Kill Recovery!"

Lawrence Lessig

Wired

May 2004

A major-party candidate addresses a crowd of tech innovators in the near future:

And finally, let me talk about the economy. There will be no real economic recovery that doesn't begin here. Silicon Valley set the pulse of the last great economic boom. It is the key to reviving that growth again. [Wait for applause.]

Yet we will kill that recovery if we continue our crazy dance with protectionism. [Pause.] Protectionism is competition through government favor rather than merit. It is power used to defeat change. Over the past five years, this valley has suffered protectionism of one sort: intellectual property laws out of touch with their animating purpose. If trends continue, it will suffer something worse.

Intellectual property law, of course, is essential to growth. Its aim is to secure creative incentives. And we must never fail to defend that aim if we're to continue to lead the world in technological innovation. [Wait for applause.]

But noble purposes do not guarantee noble results. And I fear that the ideals that inspired our intellectual property laws - creativity and innovation - have been corrupted by a generation of lobbyists. Copyright law today is an insanely complex set of regulations, written by lawyers, apparently just for lawyers. The same is true for patents. Both make sense for technologies that today live only in museums; neither as crafted makes sense for the technologies of the Internet.

You have seen this effect throughout the Valley. Venture capitalists have been sued by content companies for funding innovative technologies. They therefore fund fewer content-related innovations. Law firms have been sued for defending new technologies. They are therefore hesitant to advise in favor of innovation.

We can do better. Intellectual property is vital to growth. But the law must be fit to technologies, rather than 21st-century technologies being forced to fit 19th-century laws. Copyright and patent laws could be simplified; the rightful and efficient protections they promise could be made much easier to navigate. Their aim should be to encourage competition and innovation. It should never be to protect the old against the new. [Wait for applause.]

And now I fear the same protectionism is infecting the debates surrounding trade. The greatest promise of the network that you helped build is the extraordinary spread of wealth and prosperity that it fuels. Nations that once could not begin to imagine life out of poverty can now use this network to bring prosperity and growth to their people. India, China, and other nations throughout Asia will benefit first from this capacity. African countries could follow soon after.

This prosperity is vital to all of us. It will spur growth here. It will weaken fundamentalism elsewhere. It is the product of the laws that Adam Smith taught us. It is the consequence of the lessons that America has been teaching the world for generations - that free markets free people.

Yet we call this great good bad. We amplify anxiety through code words like outsourcing, and our rhetoric invites policies that would return this nation to the darkest days of the Depression. [Ignore boos from laid-off, pissed-off programmers.]

We politicians know better. We know, as you know, that protectionism is wrong. We know, as you know, that politicians can't change the laws of Adam Smith. And we know, as you know, that if America is to maintain its moral standing in the world - if we are to avoid the grossest hypocrisy as we force the world to embrace free trade but exempt ourselves - then we must give up protectionism. We must stop using Washington to protect against progress. [Step back from podium and smile humbly. Resume in softer voice.]

We politicians, like you innovators, believe in ourselves. We believe in the good we could do if only given the chance. Too often we believe that a supposed good justifies the lies we tell. We know the harm that protectionism produces. But it sells, so we sell protectionism.

Only you can stop us.

Those hurt by transition can be helped by the government. But cries for protection must not be answered by economic folly. Your silence in the face of that folly is understandable. But your silence will only guarantee that folly prevails. And the consequence of that folly - continued protectionism - will benefit no one. Not the rich, not the poor. Not America, not the world. [In absence of applause, smile and exit stage left - quickly.]

Email Lawrence Lessig at lessig@pobox.com.