This is a bad thing. It is also constitutionally dubious in my view. Federalists have also been much influenced by the economic analysis of law, demanding evidence of the economic justification of any state intervention in the economy, particularly where such interventions amount to the creation of state-protected limited monopolies. Think of airline deregulation. Well the conventional response is that the Internet is a grave threat to intellectual property rights, because of the risk of piracy and hence the expansions of intellectual property are justified.
Lets be clear, the Internet definitely poses a risk of piracy.
Thus, goes the argument, we need to strengthen and expand intellectual property rights to make up for the losses to come. However, it would take only economics of a very sophomoric level to point out that changes like the Internet produce changes on both sides of the intellectual property scale. That is to say, the Internet makes copying easier. That might lead us to believe that we need to strengthen the rights of existing intellectual property holders to compensate for the loss that they might suffer because of the copying. But the Internet also, as any of you who have ever used a search engine would be able to testify, is probably the best copyright violation detection device ever invented.