In today's Washington Post article, Weighing Webcasters Right to Content, Jonathan Krim defined the challenges faced in identifying ownership of Online content:

"The minutiae and complexity of rights and treaties in those (content ownership) matters are enough to cure a small nation of insomnia.

But the battle demonstrates yet again the high stakes and tensions of an era in which information is king, yet products and services are being produced at lightning speed to make information ever more copyable, malleable and portable."

Proponents of accommodations for public domain status and free information flow argue that there is value in the ability of the Web to introduce a variety of new audiences to public domain works, similar to the value new and emerging artists have realized from audio file sharing.

The official response appears to support the past record on this issue, judging from this quote from the article:

"We do have an economy that operates on market principles," says Michael Keplinger, a senior counsel at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "And intellectual property rights have served very well to help that market function."

No one is saying copyright owners should not be compensated for their efforts, just that common sense needs to enter the equation.

These are the types of issues we should keep in mind in the evaluation of Supreme Court Justice nominations. Given the obsurity and complexity of the issue, it's the type of thing that could get missed in the smoke created by the focus on the more commonly debated and incendiary issues.