The Progress & Freedom Foundation's Tom Snydor has assembled a critique of free culture advocate and Change Congress founder Larry Lessig that is worth a read, if only to better understand exactly how Lessig's nuanced approach to copyright so throughly agitates those who fully embrace the idea that creative content is property, to be held by the individual like an acre of land or an iPod.

But you have to hand it to PFF and Syndor, in that they really went full-bore on their criticism of Lessig's thinking on copyright. I mean, Buzz Bissinger went easier on Will Leitch when the author ranted and raved at the sports blogger on Bob Costas's show the other night. You can pretty much call the winner of an argument the minute that one side trots out the phrase "quasi-socialist utopianism," which does a disservice to sensible arguments that a more thoughtful approaches to challenges in creative content -- like network neutrality -- might actually require more regulation.

For the crowd associated with The Progress & Freedom Foundation -- a self-described "market-oriented" think tank -- "regulation" is like "pedophile" or "patriotism": one of those phrases that you toss out to circumvent thoughtful discussion. But Lessig has advanced a model for thinking about regulation that involves multiple players: architecture/code, society, markets, and the law, and an honest adversary would be useful in advancing that framework into wider applicability.