Lessig Passage--Chapter 12: Harms

"To fight 'piracy,' to protect 'property,' the content industry has launched a war...As with any war of prohibition, these damages will be suffered most by our own people...Is this war justified?...There is no good reason why this time, for the first time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the power of the property called 'intellectual property' is at it greatest in our history...In the next ten years we will see an explosion of digital technologies...There is a vast amount of creative work spread across the Internet.  But as the law is currently crafted, this work is presumptively illegal...Can common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for downloading two songs off the internet is more than the fine for a doctor's negligently butchering a patient?  The consequence of this legal uncertainty, tied to these extremely high penalties, is that an extraordinary amount of creativity will either never be exercised, or never be exercised in the open...If a different system achieved the same legitimate objectives that the existing copyright system achieved, but left consumers and creators much more free, then we'd have a very good reason to pursue this alternative--namely, freedom...When forty to sixty million Americans are considered 'criminals' under the law, and when the law could achieve the same objective--securing rights to authors--without these millions being considered 'criminals,' who is the villain?  Americans or the law?  Which is American, a constant war on our own people or a concerted effort through our democracy to change our law?"