I just finished this last night. It’s worth reading. It spells out a lot of the background in the copyright wars (a phrase Lessig isn’t fond of but admits is an apt description). What I found most useful was the historical review of how each new medium has built on and derived content from its predecessor.
The last part of the book — detailing Lessig’s failure to win the Eldred case before the Supreme Court — seemed a tad self-indulgent and whiny at the same time. Yes, we know the court was unreceptive to the argument, but part of me wonders if Lessig himself isn’t a lightning rod for issues like this. The whole Special Master business in the MSFT/NSCP case is not so long ago.
Anyway, it dragged a bit. Perhaps that’s an artifact of this being a book for a general audience but having constitutional law as its subject matter: most general readers have managed to avoid taking a graduate level Con Law course.
What did ring true was his unhappiness with the legal profession and its role in fencing off the public domain. And the insight into what kind of money we’re talking about when an estate decides to extend its copyright — a million dollars in campaign contributions and other lobbying expenses might protect a given estate’s annual income of $100,000 — was also informative. A million dollars, even to the millionaires club known as Congress, is still an eye-catching sum of money, and it’s easy to see how the copyright extensions keep on coming.
Between this and the abolition of the inheritance tax, we look to be headed toward a return of the feudal society with aristocrats and their inherited holdings versus the rest of us who have to work for a living.