Dangers of over-zealous intellectual property cops

Worries about the poaching of intellectual property certainly didn't start with illegal downloads of Lady Gaga. Tensions between producers of art and ideas and those who wish to steal them have existed through history. At the same time, attempts to crack down on intellectual piracy have had their own unintended consequences, as Adrian Johns shows in "Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates," published last month by University of Chicago Press. Johns is a professor of hist...