copyright wars made personal

My friend Pete keeps a great blog that's mainly about his bike riding, training and racing exploits in Northern Michigan. He just put up a post that makes copyright law a whole lot more tangible for me. Pete writes:

I was able to cobble together a couple minutes worth of raw footage that I've shot since getting the new video camera last week... Unfortunately, YouTube busted me for copyright violations and wouldn't let me publish the video with the song I'd picked out. I had to go through their authorized music library (which isn't very big), and this tune was the best one I could find.

Lawrence Lessig is right. It's time to rewrite the rules of enforcement copyright holders to protect amateur creators.