There is a choice to be made between the competing cultural visions of cyberspace and the way that choice can shape the form and content of cyberspace property rights. To clarify this choice I offer a typology of information and intellectual property rights and an economic analysis of how developments on the Internet have challenged traditional conceptions of intellectual property law. I observe that cyberspace is particularly vulnerable to market failure because of network externalities (when a product is more valuable the more people buy it) and lockins (when the cost of switching products is prohibitively high). Both applications and interfaces are, in their very nature, susceptible to these kinds of market failures and thus the cyberspace market as a whole is highly susceptible to monopolization. Because monopolization will tend to support a dystopic vision of cyberspace, I suggest that limited government regulation may be necessary to preserve competitive distribution.

Margaret Jane Radin is Professor of Law, Stanford University. Prior to joining the Stanford Law faculty in 1990 she was Carolyn Craig Franklin Professor of Law at USC. Professor Radin has also taught at UCLA and Harvard as a visiting professor of law. Professor Radin's current research and teaching field is intellectual property, information technology, and the jurisprudence of cyberspace. She has written extensively on the issue of what things are appropriately treated as market commodities, and her book on this subject, ``Contested Commodification,'' will be published in early 1996 by Harvard University Press. Professor Radin is also author of ``Reinterpreting Property,'' published in 1993 by University of Chicago Press. Professor Radin is Of Counsel to the Palo Alto law firm of Fenwick and West.

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