Professor David K. Levine of UCLA has posted drafts of chapters one and two of his new book The Case Against Intellectual Property, co-authored with Michele Boldrin.

The first two chapters (in Acrobat format) are a good read about the problems and potential solutions to current-day intellectual property issues.

Generally, they're looking to move the government out of the business of enforcing intellectual property as a special-case portion of the law.

Although the economics seem pretty sound, as do the examples shown, I'm not yet convinced that their mechanisms will work in favor of the "little guy" in areas where the the cost of copying is inexpensive.

Well worth a read.