Copyright Law Is a Battlefield

Viacom sues Google for letting copyright-protected material slip onto YouTube. Brewster Kahle sues the federal government over a public-domain policy he considers restrictive. The recording industry sues college students -- and, some critics say, just about everyone else in sight -- for downloading music illegally. Lawsuits are the lingua franca of intellectual-property debate, and that's not likely to change any time soon, says Larry Downes.

Mr. Downes, a technology consultant and adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley, draws parallels between the current information wars and the Industrial Revolution -- which spurred the rise of communism and the progressive movement, both of them "rejections of a legal system that no longer functioned, and which could not adapt to changing realities."


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