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One suggested response to this rather radical change was to move to a strategy based on another central element in modern science and technology: standards. The idea was to treat standards not as things to which to conform, but as things to exceed. Had it been pursued, this would have undermined the uniformity of digital networks. That is, it would have endangered the very property that is often taken to be the intrinsic, defining virtue of the Internet, permitting its global reach. It would have done so in order to reassert a tie between authorship and credibility. That tie seemed by now to be the axiom of good order in creativity and commerce. How to reconcile it with the powers of the Internet remains a central question of our time.

Daniel Defoe created the first classification of intellectual piracy almost exactly three centuries ago. He sorted it into ahandful of simple categories like abridgment, epitomizing, and reprinting in smaller fonts.1Today any corresponding taxonomy would extend to a vast array of sins-phishing, identity theft, biopiracy seed piracy, and so on. It would surely baffle even someone as worldly as Defoe. Because more things fall under the aegis of intellectual property today than ever before -including recordings, algorithms, digital creations, genes, and even living organisms -practices that until relatively recently would not have seemed even potentially piratical may now be deemed actually so. Meanwhile, as the information economy has grown, so it seems that piracy has metastasized beyond anyone's ability to understand and master it. Some of its species are industries in their own right. In political and economic rhetoric the accusation of piracy has become the indictment of the age, and a ubiquitous element in the framing of national and international trade politics.

The story of piracy has two major implications in this context. The first derives from the point that intellectual property exists only insofar as it is recognized, defended, and acted upon. That is, it is a practical matter. It takes shape not only through the stipulation of laws and treaties, but also through the actions societies take to put those laws and treaties into effect in homes, offices, factories, and colleges. Challenges demand responses, and the roles of intellectual property in everyday life reflect the history of their interaction. But in recent years the character of that interaction has changed. As piracy has grown and diversified, so a coun- terindustry has emerged, dedicated to combating it. The coherence and scope of this industry are relatively new and remarkable. In previous centuries, particular groups or industries mounted efforts against piracy; but they did not generally regard them as fronts in one common cause. Now they generally do. The same tools, tactics, and strategies can be seen deployed across what would earlier have been discrete conflicts. So the first implication is that we need to appreciate the historical significance of this industry of antipiracy policing and apprehend its consequences, at every social level. The second implication follows from that. Measures adopted against piracy can sometimes impinge on other, equallyvalued, aspects of society Indeed, it is possible that they must do so, given the nature of the task. When that happens, however, they can trigger deeply felt reactions. The result is a crisis, with the potential to create a moment of genuine transformation. We have seen that such moments have arisen before. But the change is liable to be all the greater when the scope of antipiracy action has been so enlarged. We may therefore be about to experience aprofound shift in the relation between creativity and commerce. It will be the most radical revolution in intellectual property since the mid-eighteenth century It may even represent the end of intellectual property itself.

THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEFENSE INDUSTRY

A story has been unfolding quietly between