The leading corporations divest themselves of their productive capacity, as this is no longer a source of power. Their power lies in monopolising intellectual property - patents and brands - and the means of reproducing their value - the vectors of communication.

This is very interesting. Rare is it that I find someone who understands the distinction between scarce resources and resources that are not scarce and can consider whether resources that are not scarce ought to be treated as if they were. In addition, this author manages to unify the interest of creators in "open source" and remixable work with their simultaneous conflicts over intellectual property rights with their employers.

Unfortunately, all of this gets cast in a marxist light. The idea of classes is discredited in America. Artificial scarcity is inefficient, and that is where the arguments ought to hinge. Silicon Valley works better because its non-competes are unenforceable and its IP agreements don't stretch into the garage.

In any event, the language is not really relevant. There IS a group of people in this country who mostly create and another group of people who mostly own, and they are quite at odds with eachother over questions such as what sort of copyright system actually benefits innovation. So much can be read directly from Lessig's most recent court case.

Apparently the author has written a book on this subject. There may be things to learn here. I'll post more later...

A(nother) Hacker's Manifesto[PDF]