Let me give you a hypothetical...

You and I are in your kitchen.  I see a pair of scissors and ask if I can borrow them to cut my nose hair (I'm an electric clipper man but we're being hypothetical here).  You, understandably, say no because you don't want the scissors you use around food being stuck up someone's nose. 

So I wait until your back is turned, steal the scissors and cut my nose hair anyway. 

In that scenario, doesn't that make me a jerk?  Is there any question I'm wrong in taking your scissors?  Even though you can clean the scissors and be fine its wrong of me to take them and stick them up my nose without your permission.

Someone should tell that to Lawrence Lessig...

(Superfluous sentences were removed for space requirements, please follow the link for his whole article)

Early February 2007, Stephanie Lenz's 13-month-old son started dancing. Pushing a walker across her kitchen floor, Holden Lenz started moving to the distinctive beat of a song by Prince, "Let's Go Crazy." Holden's mom grabbed her camcorder and, for 29 seconds, captured the priceless image of Holden dancing, with the barely discernible Prince playing on a CD player somewhere in the background.

Ms. Lenz wanted her mother to see the film. But you can't easily email a movie. So she did what any citizen of the 21st century would do: She uploaded the file to YouTube and sent her relatives and friends the link. Sometime over the next four months, however, someone from Universal Music Group also watched Holden dance. Universal manages the copyrights of Prince. It fired off a letter to YouTube demanding that it remove the unauthorized "performance" of Prince's music. YouTube, to avoid liability itself, complied.

This sort of thing happens all the time today. Companies like YouTube are deluged with demands to remove material from their systems. No doubt a significant portion of those demands are fair and justified. Universal's demand, however, was not. The quality of the recording was terrible. No one would download Ms. Lenz's video to avoid paying Prince for his music. There was no plausible way in which Prince or Universal was being harmed by Holden Lenz.

The argument Mr. Lessig ends up making is that Copyright Law should be changed to allow those who want to "remix" copyrighted material to do so as long as they don't make money off it (such as in the case above).

Now, I don't know what Universal's problem is here.  I don't personally see it.  But I'm certainly not arrogant enough to say there's no justifiable reason for their actions (as Mr. Lessig essentially says).  Maybe they don't want a Prince song, which are known for having "sexy overtones", associated with a cute baby.  Maybe they feel it would hurt sales.  It's certainly possible.

Again, I don't know but the real question is this: Who is Mr. Lessig to decide what is and is not acceptable use of someone else's work?  More importantly, who is he to demand the Government step in and force people to relinquish control over their work?

Just as in the "nose hair example" above you shouldn't have the right to take other people's things and do with them as you please. 

What this basically boils down to is Mr. Lessig can't see outside of himself.  Because he doesn't see anything wrong with the youtube story he assumes there isn't anything wrong with it.  He's substituting his opinion for iron clad fact and then suggesting legislation be written based on those iron clad facts.

But as someone who has known a fair number of artists I can tell you that they are very concerned about how their art is used and many would see someone turning it into something else as it being defiled.  You can think that's an over reaction but do you really want to make a law against it?