by Lawrence Lessig

About the author: Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in the Connected World and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

Editor’s Note: The following viewpoint was written in response to America Online’s January 2000 announcement of its plans to merge with fellow media giant Time-Warner. The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger in January 2001.

America Online is America’s largest Internet service provider. Twenty-two million members get to the Internet through AOL. If it were a state, AOL would rank second in the nation in population, behind California. The company has a market capitalization of $125 billion—a bit less than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Denmark. And with its proposed...