Professor Mahoney's perceptive review below of Larry Lessig's Free Culture came at the right time for me, because I have been looking over that book during the holidays. Lessig is very good at making arguments regarding the erosion of creative expression using selected examples, but there is much evidence -- the Supreme Court's approval of 2 Live Crew's parody of Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman, for example -- that conflicts with his argument. This "creative expression" argument, however, has no bearing whatsoever on unauthorized downloads of copyrighted content on P2P networks. In fact, I feel the argument is a red herring, for it's hard for these academics to directly defend theft.

Disclosure: I am not related to Jim DeLong.