There's a lot of talk of Freedom these days, be it in Iraq or the United States. The context, despite circumstances, remains the same - as Edward Rothstein poignantly begins his article for the New York Times:

...Disagreements about the nature of government, culture and freedom — once matters of abstract theory — have recently become all too urgent. What sort of government is ideal? What are the connections between a culture and its ideas of freedom? And how is freedom to be balanced with the rule of law? The fates of nations at war rest on such questions.

For what is at stake in this more placid arena other than questions of ownership and concepts of liberty and obligation? And aren't the stakes high here as well, particularly as technological innovations make possible a universe in which everything can be copied and anything goes as well as a universe in which everything is controlled and nothing is permitted?... -- Liberty, Technology, Duty: Where Peace Overlaps War By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

In the spirit of work done over at the eAsylum's Free Culture Remix, Wonko's going to use that article as a funky bass line. Let's add a few things.

Free the Orphans: A Look at the Case of Kahle v. Ashcroft is a recent article by Richard Koman:

...Mike Perry, an editor for Seattle-based Inkling Books, wants to publish the writings of Dr. Leo Alexander. In Perry's view, Alexander, a Vienna-trained psychiatrist and Army officer who followed American troops into Germany in the final days of World War II, has a lot to tell us about the nature of evil. After the war, Alexander served as special medical advisor at the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunals, and after the trials, Alexander wrote a number of articles for professional journals about Nazism and particularly, the SS. Alexander described how the Nazis glorified death and how they justified their crimes.

So Mike Perry contacted the journals, most of which are still in publication, and found out that in all cases Dr. Alexander had retained the copyright. If the magazines held the copyright, they surely would have given permission for their republication, probably at little or no cost. Perry couldn't ask Alexander himself, since he had died. And Perry has been unable to locate Alexander's heirs. End of the road...

This highlights the same problem Lawrence Lessig writes of in Chapter 8 of Free Culture; this is what Starwave encountered with their Clint Eastwood CD. Yet the knowledge of which Perry wrote is probably more pertinent than watching Clint Eastwood saying, "Do you feel lucky, punk?".

I am reminded of what Thoreau wrote:

...Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. the only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made man a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice... -- Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau (available through Project Gutenberg)

If the Laws restrict the Freedom by which Men live to a point where morality is in question, the Laws must change in a conscientious society. Are we a part of a conscientious society? In the land where Copyright, Patents and Trademarks are leveraged for gain around the world, some wise people wrote this:

Congress shall have the power ... to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. -- United States Constitution