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to obscure French theorists--however natural that is for the weird sort we academics have become. Instead I begin in each part with a collection of stories that set a context within which these apparently simple ideas can be more fully understood.
The two sections set up the core claim of this book: that while the Internet has indeed produced something fantastic and new, our government, pushed by big media to respond to this "something new," is destroying something very old. Rather than understanding the changes the Internet might permit, and rather than taking time to let "common sense" resolve how best to respond, we are allowing those most threatened by the changes to use their power to change the law--and more importantly, to use their power to change something fundamental about who we have always been.
We allow this, I believe, not because it is right, and not because most of us really believe in these changes. We allow it because the interests most threatened are among the most powerful players in our depressingly compromised process of making law. This book is the story of one more consequence of this form of corruption--a consequence to which most of us remain oblivious.
"PIRACY"
Since the inception of the law regulating creative property, there has been a war against "piracy." The precise contours of this concept, "piracy," are hard to sketch, but the animating injustice is easy to capture. As Lord Mansfield wrote in a case that extended the reach of English copyright law to include sheet music,
A person may use the copy by playing it, but he has no right to rob the author of the profit, by multiplying copies and disposing of them for his own use.1
Today we are in the middle of another "war" against "piracy." The Internet has provoked this war. The Internet makes possible the efficient spread of content. Peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing is among the most efficient of the efficient technologies the Internet ena
