Digital Rights Network

Excellent non-specialist discussion of the relation of copyright, plagiarism and borrowing by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker: Something Borrowed - Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life. It includes many of the usual suspects (Lessig, drug patents etc) and extends beyond copyright to IP generally. It also does a very good job of making clear why 'IP' is not property most fundamentally because of its non-rival nature - a point which, to my mind, is still most eloquently put by Jefferson: He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.