Lawrence Lessig Reviews the Facebook Movie

Hugh Pickens writes: "Lawrence Lessig — author, Harvard law professor, co-founder of Creative Commons — reviews 'The Social Network' in The New Republic and although Lessig says the movie is an "intelligent, beautiful, and compelling film" he adds that as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed because the movie fails to even mention the real magic behind the Facebook story and because while everyone walking out out of the movie will think they understand the genius of the Internet, almost none of them will have seen the real ethic of internet creativity that makes success stories like Facebook possible. "Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform," writes Lessig. "And that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders—Zuckerberg and the Internet—working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink." Lessig laments that the creators of the movie didn't understand the ethic of Internet creativity and thought that the real story was the invention of Facebook not the platform that made such democratic innovation possible. "Zuckerberg is a rightful hero of our time," concludes Lessig. "As I looked around at the packed theater of teens and twenty-somethings, there was no doubt who was in the right, however geeky and clumsy and sad. That generation will judge this new world. If, that is, we allow that new world to continue to flourish.""