Zittrain's video came at a most timely moment, as my friend in France, Mike Marzio of the Real English School had just had his wonderful videos ripped off by a Brazilian "entrepreneur," who was cutting CDs of the recordings. Painful!
After many messages from outraged Webheads, the offending works were removed. You can see the comparison of the works and the outcome at Mike's site.
The tie-in to Zittrain is a little thin. He describes how spam is ruining the Internet and how that problem may affect future development of and user choices on the Web. He suggests that a top-down solutions can be oppressive to creativity and the "generative Internet," while community cooperation and resources may be able to stop the looming danger and keep the "creative Internet" safe. However, I see the connection to Mike's case in that user-generated content has to have protections without being oppressively legalistic. In this case, the community responded to protect its member from being ripped off--and it worked!
BTW, the Real English videos are now accessible for free, and Mike continues to add new content frequently at Real English.
