The only difference, you might think, is that you are reading on a computer screen instead of on paper. Of course, if I send an e-mail message that I have authored to a friend, I have impliedly authorized my friend to copy the file into his computer. Likewise, if I pay whatever subscription fee is required to view an on-line version of today's Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones won't call me an infringer for reading its dispatches. The question copyright law will have to settle is whether browsing on the Internet is more akin to browsing at your local bookstore, or is more analogous to placing Grisham's novel surreptitiously on my Xerox machine or scanning its pages into my computer's memory. These two views of this most rudimentary question are incompatible with one another, though each is perfectly logical-a sure sign that a paradigm shift may be in order.
Copying remains a means by which free-riders can appropriate the creative output of others.
To that extent the law will seek to discourage it. David Post is a visiting associate professor at Georgetown Law Center.