Larry Lessig has a brief bit in Foreign Policy called The Public Domain: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It’s Larry’s standard pitch for balance and for the protection of the public domain. Clearly written and concise and well-argued. What makes it interesting is the placement. In Foreign Policy.

It begins:

Within every culture, there is a public domain—a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.

This public domain has always lived alongside a private domain—the part of culture that is owned and regulated, that part whose use requires the permission of someone else. Through the market incentives it creates, the private domain has also produced extraordinary cultural wealth throughout the world. It is essential to how cultures develop.