Cyberspace can be made safer from the chaos and crime that threaten to overwhelm it. But most recipes for security and order come at a very steep price: the loss of the Internet’s creative potency.

This is a rare HBR article that's freely available. But it's only free for a few more days -- until June 27. So get it now, save it, print it.

See also this interview with Zittrain:

In his June 2007 Harvard Business Review article, "Saving the Internet," Jonathan Zittrain describes a looming battle between the yin and yang -- the positive and negative forces -- that the Internet enables. Because of its simple, open design, the Internet is ideal for what Zittrain calls “generativity” -- the capacity of a system to welcome “unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” Generativity is what makes the Internet a productive wellspring of innovation; but it also makes the Net vulnerable to spam, fraud, porn, predation, and increasingly severe and numerous attacks on the network infrastructure itself.

Saving the Internet