Now, though, the case for copyright reform is being made by figures on the right as well. Last fall, the famous judge and law-and-economics scholar Richard Posner declared copyright terms to be too long and warned that poorly defined fair-use rules can have "very damaging effects on creativity."
This conservative critique heated up significantly in January when a Republican memo in the House attacked over-reaching copyright laws as an assault on laissez-faire capitalism. The entertainment industry soon stepped in to smother the memo and get its author fired but the memo's contents are still resonating.
In late January, the American Conservative published a lengthy feature on "crony copyright" that repeated the memo's economic arguments and also reported that the Tea Party and the Heritage Foundation are taking a growing interest in IP reform. Since then, the right-wing Washington Times printed an op-ed criticizing the White House for trying to use copyright to control public domain photographs.
So what does all this mean? The significance is that copyright reformers have powerful new allies and fresh intellectual ammunition. While the left has relied on cultural arguments to attack the copyright system, the right makes a compelling case based on economics.
Es kommt langsam Bewegung ins Spiel.