While philosophically I agree with Lessig’s argument that we should be wary of the increase in scope of copyright and the somewhat disingenuous attempts to equate intellectual property rights with physical property rights, I found the explanation of the mechanism somewhat lacking. For example, on pg. 144 of Free Culture, Lessig mentions that when you read a book beyond the permitted number of times, you are hence “making a copy of book contrary” to the copyright owner’s wish. While I am not in favor of that these types of restrictions on electronic content, I fail to understand how exactly reading an e-book is making a copy of it, and this understanding meant that I found the crux of his argument on the expansion of regulated speech to be weak from a technical perspective.

I also found that the supporting opinion and the two dissenting opinions in Eldred v. Ashcroft seemed to come from two very different perspectives. The Court’s opinion seemed to focus mainly on technicalities – is a 20-year perspective “limited”? How does the First Amendment play into this? – while the dissents seemed to examine the issue more broadly, focusing on the economic application of copyright, which leads me to wonder if perhaps the plaintiffs in the case should have framed the issues at hand slightly differently, since it seems that if they had perhaps not attacked the law on such technical grounds, they might have had more success. On the other hand, the economic grounds, while to me morally better, would probably have been on shakier legal ground.

My question for the week is: if one disagrees with Eldred v. Ashcroft, and opposes the 20-year extension of copyright, then on what (legal) grounds should it have been opposed?