Credit: Harry Campbell

Physicists speak of dark energy, the label applied to the expansive oomph permeating the universe. The Internet has its own dark energy: the legions of nerds who code for fun, challenge, and uncertain profit. They do not make a business plan or solicit lawyers and VCs before jumping in, and they have no particular political or economic power. Yet they are the ones who developed the Internet in a back­water and declined to patent its protocols. They are the ones who took the hobbyist platforms of the first PCs and turned them into powerhouses that, together with the Internet, gave us one pleasant surprise after another: the electronic spreadsheet, instant messaging, Internet telephony, Wikipedia. But two problems threaten the Web's dark energy.

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