James Boyle, author and Duke Law professor takes a look at intellectual property and calls for cultural environmentalism, a movement that brings "democratic and scholarly scrutiny to a set of issues that ... had been handled by a few insiders with little oversight or evidence. We needed an environmentalism of the mind, a politics of the information age."

He is discouraged by public policy to date. "[S]ome would see a decisive victory for the old style of industry-captured policy making without evidence to back it up. We have extended copyright term limits, increased European intellectual property rights over facts, broadened the boundaries of trademark law, made patent law come tremblingly close to cover basic ideas and algorithms - and in all those cases there was little or no evidence that the new protection was either necessary or desirable."

But he sees signs of hope in reports and programs that bring a balanced discussion from the European Commission, the US Register of Copyrights, and a conference at Stanford University.

I hope so as well.