There’s an interesting intellectual property debate going on over at Technology Review. Lawrence Lessig hones in on the basic problem:

It is the nature of digital technologies that every use produces a copy. Thus, it is the nature of a copyright regime like the United States’, designed to regulate copies, that every use in the digital world produces a copyright question: Has this use been licensed? Is it permitted? And if not permitted, is it “fair”? Thus, reading a book in analog space may be an unregulated act. But reading an e-book is a licensed act, because reading an e-book produces a copy. Lending a book in analog space is an unregulated act. But lending an e-book is presumptively regulated. Selling a book in analog space is an unregulated act. Selling an e-book is not. In all these cases, and many more, ordinary uses that were once beyond the reach of the law now plainly fall within the scope of copyright regulation. The default in the analog world was freedom; the default in the digital world is regulation.

I’m going on a brief hiatus, so that’ll be my last link for a little while. But keep checking back – Bob, Kim and Dan will be keeping the home fires burning.