madd0.com

I'm currently reading a pretty good book by Lawrence Lessig called Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. It's a very interesting analysis of the state of copyright law in the United States that takes a look at the past, the present and the future. I'm only half-way through, but I still heartily recommend it.

If, like me, you don't live in the US, you're probably wondering why you should care about US copyright law and US lobbies, etc. Well, simply put, because bad ideas have a tendency to escape the United States and spread throughout the world, like a tumor spreads its deadly tentacles throughout a healthy body (and there you go, I'm now probably banned for life from entry to the United States for exercising one of the rights Americans appreciate the most.)

Anyway, if you do not have the time to read the actual book (freely available from the book's web site, by the way) or you do not like reading in English, you might want to take a look at this presentation that, even though it does not really summarize the book, does cover some of its main points: