Years ago I swore off responding to Professor Epstein in print -- not because he's not full of ideas and very often right (he is both of those things, and more), but because it's so hard to get him to listen. (He once published an article attacking an argument I had made but insistently misinterpreted my position; no matter what I did, I couldn't get him to see that we were actually in agreement.) But his response to my essay here proves that my resolve was misplaced. It is a brilliant and compelling argument for a very sensible position about copyright, software, and even culture. Save for quibbles on the margin, there's little with which I would strongly disagree.

Epstein contends that "every legal system in history has blended two separate property regimes: the private and common"; that "the justification for private rights...has to be social"; that we need a "social reason to protect writings and other intellectual creations."