The culture had changed. Once an underground, amateur pastime, the bootlegging of intellectual property became an accepted business practice. Sites like the Huffington Post liberally plucked the best paragraphs of news stories, with a grudging link back to the original item. Google scanned every book it could find. Apple’s advertisements preached, “Rip, Mix, Burn—After all, it’s your music.” Larry Lessig, a law professor who served as a chief champion of this new era, declared: “The defining feature of the Internet is that it leaves resources free.” We could portray the changes as a matter of
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