Google, YouTube and IP infringement

Interesting article by James Boyle in the Financial Times last week. He was talking about Google, YouTube and intellectual property infringements by major corporations.

Read the article

I particularly liked the following paragraph:

"When we are dealing with intellectual property, how do we know who is a trespasser and who is a greedy landowner trying to enclose the public right of way? First lesson, analogies to physical property are dangerous. Most of these disputes are about whether a new market, enabled by technology, should lie inside or outside the scope of the artificial monopoly conferred by the intellectual property right. Because these rights are created for a purpose - to foster and disseminate science, innovation and culture - there are inevitable "should" questions involved. Should copyright make it illegal for a search engine to index my book (which requires making a copy of it) if only a small fragment is available to a searcher and publishers can request removal? Google has a very good argument that copyright should not and does not make that illegal."

This relates to conversations I've been having with Peter Buneman recently about the appropriateness of the current copyright regime in a digital environment. More to follow on that one...