Techdirt link here and Slashdot here both offer an hour video of a lecture on IP that is stimulating and well worth watching, particularly for someone like me who is a newcomer to these issues. If you haven't seen it, you have missed a good show and a compelling argument. The lecturer, patent attorney Stephan Kinsella, bills himself as a libertarian but he makes a strong utilitarian argument as well that all the evidence shows that the ostensible gains are exceeded by the costs of the system and that society is clearly poorer as a result. To me the utilitarian argument seems to be the one most likely to succeed with the general public, i.e., that IP is bad for the average person.