eWeek Technology Editor Peter Coffee writes on the distortion of content, or intellectual property (IP), in the digital world. He reminds us that despite the entertainment business's spin and unquenchable thirst for control and power, copyright law's primary goal is to promote innovation for society and future content-makers.

Excerpts from his article:

Digital media, it must be recognized, don't merely reproduce the function of conventional media at a lower cost of producing a higher-quality copy. Digital media also shift a delicate and crucial balance in the direction of giving content creators far more control of how their work is used, reducing the chance that old work will trigger new ideas.

It's simply not acceptable to let phrases like "intellectual property" continue to shape this debate with the false analogies they inspire. IP is not a symbolic parallel to real estate or other assets that can have only one beneficial owner at any time. The central question is not how to prevent ideas and expressions from being stolen; the question is how to maximize the benefit of inspiring people to create new work while minimizing the nuisance of granting them any post-creation rights at all.