Over two hundred delegates packed the debating chamber of the Oxford Union last week to hear internet luminaries Lawrence Lessig and Esther Dyson consider the future of the Internet and ways we can shape its future.
Both were speaking at The Politics of Code, a conference jointly organised by the Oxford Internet Institute and the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Politics at Oxford University.
Lessig, a Stanford Law professor, is famous for his claim that "code is law" and that we must understand how the programs that define the Internet also determine how we behave online. He arrived in Oxford exhausted and, it seemed, somewhat dispirited after failing in an attempt to persuade the US Supreme Court to overturn a law which extended copyright protection for twenty years.
His argument against the law, commonly called the "Mickey Mouse Copyright Act" because its main effect was to keep Disney's famous creation out of the public domain for another two decades, failed to impress the judges.
In his keynote speech Lessig was pessimistic about our chances of fighting back against the loss of what he calls the "creative commons". He believes that the large corporations who own most works are in a position to exert almost complete control over how we use music, movies, images and words, limiting the potential for innovation and seriously restricting our creative activity.
Admitting that government action in the US seems unlikely - "where I come from the presumption is that what is good for AOL is good for America," he said - he was nonetheless unwilling to admit that all is lost. However, he pointed out that "as a lawyer I don't see the solution, I can just tell you what the problem is".
Meanwhile Esther Dyson, formerly an advisor to US Vice-President Al Gore, delivered a remarkable talk about, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names. This is the body that manages domain names and hands out internet addresses, and Dyson - the body's founding chair - encouraged net users to get involved in ICANN policy-making through her At Large Advisory Committee.
Her speech tried both to apologise for the past failings of the organisation and distance her from its failed policies. Claiming that she was only "peripherally involved" in setting up the body, despite being its first chair, she admitted that ICANN had lost public sympathy and failed to deliver on its promises.
She went on to argue that the recently agreed changes to the structure of the board, and policies she is developing to promote public involvement, will change this for the better, and that ICANN has a future as an independent overseer of those aspects of Internet addressing which need to be dealt with on a global basis.
Few of the delegates seemed convinced by her argument, and there was a heated discussion about the need for ICANN and whether the organisation should be wound up.
The rest of the day was filled with debates about how the net is developing, especially because of the introduction of a new version of the key networking standard that ties it all together, Internet Protocol version 6. This promoted a discussion of online privacy and anonymity, and delegates emphasised the importance of thinking about these issues now before technology advances and the opportunity to influence them is gone.
One or two of the sessions turned from lectures to arguments as speakers from the floor expressed their strong disagreement with the policies of companies like Intel, whose plans for providing hardware support for copyright control were said to be leading us into a "digital dark ages".
And not a single positive word was said about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the controversial US law that makes it illegal to break copy protection even if the purpose is to exert legal rights to use material, or for its European equivalent, the Copyright Directive.
Over post-conference drinks in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum the atmosphere was significantly more optimistic than in the formal sessions, and the idea of bringing together well-known net figures, policy makers, academics and technical experts seemed to bear fruit as email addresses and website addresses were exchanged. Plans were made for further meetings, new initiatives and joint projects.
It remains to be seen whether the copyright cartel - the companies that technology journalist Andrew Orlowski has called "the pigopolists" - can be defeated by this group of academics and network administrators. But as Lawrence Lessig said: "we have got to become political. Unfortunately we hate politics: in the US we watch TV."
Perhaps it is time for the couch potatoes to rise up and seize the day.
