Dan Hunter's written a really interesting academic paper bent on refuting the notion that the copyright-reform movement is Marxist, and in showing that there are Marxist tendencies in the free/open source software movement.
The Marxist-Lessigist movement has provided the signal benefit of identifying theproblems that occur with the relentless expansion of intellectual property interests. Without muscular social welfarist protection of the public domain intellectualproperty industries will never voluntarily reduce their expansionary claims. As we've witnessed time and time again, intellectual property rights-holders have always soughtwider property grants, longer terms, and stronger enforcement mechanisms. And these additional private interests are almost always extracted from the public.72 Wesimply cannot expect those who are granted property interests to reduce their entitlements to accord with social policy. Yet without such limitations the expansionof intellectual property must eventually lead to a kind of intellectual and cultural paralysis. There was once a libertarian political theorist called Andrew Galambos,whose philosophy revolved around property, especially intellectual property.73 He represents the logical endpoint of intellectual property expansion. Galambos thoughtit wrong to use anyone's ideas without permission and compensation: he believed, for example, that the inventor of the wheel was due a royalty on every automobile sold.74He presented lectures advocating this (and other libertarian ideas) and demanded that his listeners promise that they would never use "his" ideas without his permission. Asone commentator mused, this may be why you've never heard of him.
