Copyright law is the epicenter – current methods of law dilute the intellectual worth or the subjects

 [*308]  Intellectual property law has taken property beyond its roots in the tangible - those things we literally hold dear. That extension has loosed legions of academics through many hundreds of articles to fervently debate the appropriate extent of property rights in ideas and their expression. 56 From the fine to the technological arts, the burning question is whether increasing "propertization" of those intangibles reflects an improved understanding of the appropriate (and even just) reach of individual ownership or, alternatively, whether Blackstonian absolute domains run amok.

Examples can be found across the full gamut of intellectual property regimes. Patent law's subject matter has been extended to cover business methods 57 and the "stuff of life," 58 putting those areas of the formerly public domain behind private fences. 59 Proponents, depending on their normative persuasions, may laud the expansion as encouraging economically beneficial increases in innovation 60 or as just recognition of inventors' natural rights. 61 Opponents agonize over the effects on future innovation, competition, 62 and impaired access. 63 Similarly, some praise trademark law's expansion into  [*309]  dilution and anti-cyber-squatting as avoiding incipient consumer confusion 64 or as limiting incentive-dampening free rides on others' investment. 65 Still others denounce those same expansions as clogs on competition 66 and muzzles on free speech. 67

The epicenter of public interest in the intellectual property debate, however, is copyright law. The rise and fall of Napster and its peer-to-peer progeny 68 have not only garnered considerable attention in the general press, but have also become topics of water-cooler conversation. Individuals have formed strong opinions, frequently based on direct personal experience, 69 about whether music downloaders are digital age Robin Hoods doing heroic battle against corporate greed or scurrilous knaves undermining society's cultural advance or interfering with composers' and musicians' just due. Other copyright ownership disputes include the justice (or not) of the 20-year extension of the term of protection, 70 the fairness (or not) of technology protection mechanisms and anti-circumvention laws, 71 and the appropriateness (or not) of the Supreme Court's addition of  [*310]  inducement-based secondary liability to copyright law, 72 particularly given the possible effects on innovation. 73

Property is also playing an increasingly significant role regarding issues previously framed in distinctly different terms - in particular, as questions of personal autonomy, privacy, free speech, and other individual rights. Takings jurisprudence has moved well beyond realty to incorporate claims that government "entitlements" constitute the property of the claimants, not merely individual rights. 74 Human organs and DNA hardly have long-standing traditions as personalty. As technology turns them into exploitable resources, those seeking the related economic returns (or at least to prevent others from obtaining them) have shifted from emphasizing personal autonomy concerns to asserting property-based claims. 75 Similarly, value-capture and harm-avoidance considerations arising from online consumer data collection, unwanted e-mail, 76 the scanning of websites for information, the planting of spyware, 77 and domain name conflicts, 78 lead plaintiffs to assume the mantle of wronged property owners rather than persons whose privacy has been invaded or identities compromised.