US author and business journalist Robert Levine offers some food for thought in this keynote conversation. In his forthcoming book Free Ride – How the Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back (Random House) Levine provides an alternative view to the ‘internet-is-free’ discourse and delivers a call-to-action to content owners.

The book's most spectacular deconstruction involves Lawrence Lessig. The Harvard law professor is one of the most outspoken opponents of tough copyright. For years, he's been criss-crossing the world delivering well-crafted, compelling presentations about the need to overhaul copyright. When, in 2007, Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement, seeking more than $1bn in damages, Lessig accused Viacom of trying to overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was a de facto defense of Google by Lessig who at the time was head of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. What Lessig failed to disclose is that two weeks after closing the deal to acquire YouTube, Google made a $2m donation to the Stanford Center, and a year later gave another $1.5m to Creative Commons, Lessig's most famous intellectual baby. To be fair, Levine told me he didn't believe Lessig's positions on copyright were influenced by the grants from Google. Moreover, Google set aside $100m to fight the Viacom lawsuit. Numerous examples throughout Free Ride show how technology companies are committed to influence public policy. Ironically, Lawrence Lessig's newest crusade at Harvard is about corruption in Washington.