The anti-piracy industry is nowadays a thriving one, with aspects including prevention, detection, enforcement, and, not least, lobbying for new laws and policies….

The practice of policing creative property has repeatedly triggered the redefinition of that property itself….

It would be ironic if the greatest revision of intellectual property’s nature in 150 years were to be set in train by the very measures adopted to preserve it sacrosanct.

—Adrian Johns, professor, University of Chicago: via WP. Particularly relevant now, as we witness the lurching and disruptive impact of the internet on business, software, publishing, music, science, which one might say has knocked patent law from its moorings