The Free Expression Project has released an amazing, comprehensive report on today's conflict between copyright and free expression. From the executive summary:
Should teenagers be allowed to swap music over the Internet? Should computer hackers be allowed to decrypt the entertainment industry's electronic locks on e-books, songs, or movies? Should authors, artists, and their heirs have complete and perpetual control over the sale, copying, and distribution of their creations?
Copyright law has become a rocky, treacherous field of free-expression battles. It is at the core of today's controversies in the arts, culture, and scholarship. New laws passed by Congress to aid the companies that make up the "copyright industry" have intensified the debates. These laws have badly upset the "difficult balance" between rewarding creativity through the copyright system and society's competing interest in the free flow of ideas.
(Thanks, Deirdre!)
