Abstract

"A rising tide of video peer-to-peer (P2P) activity is already beginning to affect data networks. And video P2P traffic will inexorably grow in the years ahead. Video P2P will expand beyond unauthorized sharing of commercial prerecorded content, becoming a significant driver of broadband usage and potentially creating new revenue streams. Meanwhile, because of its sheer bulk and technical characteristics, video P2P traffic will place significant strains on broadband networks. Thus, video P2P will influence both the outputs and the inputs of the Internet of the future."

In this heady atmosphere, the idea slingers are at work. Richard Posner and William Landes have proposed indefinitely renewable copyrights. Neil Netanel, William Fisher, and others propose to legalize P2P filesharing and replace the lost revenues with a tax on hardware and internet service. Joseph Liu suggests that the scope of fair use should grow with time. Mark Lemley is debunking ex post justifications for intellectual property. No surprise, the academics do not have a monopoly on idea slinging. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have gone on the offensive, proposing legislation like the Induce Act, targeted at shutting down P2P filesharing services that allow third parties to share copyrighted content.

No copywarrior is more prominent and influential than Larry Lessig. Lessig was the brilliant architect of Eric Eldred's failed challenge to the CTEA's retroactive twenty-year extension of copyright terms - effectively a twenty-year moratorium on new works entering the public domain. In Free Culture, Lessig has remade himself as a norm entrepreneur - a public figure with the towering ambition of reshaping copynorms - the fundamental set of social norms that shape perceptions of the morality of filesharing and the legitimacy of legislation that shrinks the public domain. This essay examines the ideas in Free Culture in the context of current controversies over the future of copyright."