September 13, 2002

The Essential Role of Copyright in Creative and Academic Life

To the Editor:

Siva Vaidhyanathan argues against the notion that copyright is property in favor of an ill-defined "information commons" ("Copyright as Cudgel," The Review, August 2). If we stop thinking of copyright as a form of property, he says, the elite who push for the preservation of copyright in its current form will be deprived of their chief rhetorical gambit of referring to violations of copyright as theft. After all, if I don't own my lectures, my books, or my articles,

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