The Larry Lessig-Jim DeLong fight over a 1940's case involving air rights and an aggrieved farmer has fizzled, thus crushing my hopes for a blogspectacular fight. It started with Jim accusing the Professor of misusing the Causby case in his discussion of Google print. Professor Lessig replies here, and Jim partly agrees with him. That hissing sound is the air going out of the balloon...and here I was hoping for combustion!

I still find Professor Lessig's promiscuous use of quotation marks around the word "progress" and his general tone condescending. But, hey, condescension is a valid rhetorical tactic, particularly when you are an Olympian replying to us benighted binary Washington thinkers.

Me, I don't get involved in these IP issues until we start using 18th Century enclosure movement examples. I'll leave that modernist 19th and 20th century stuff like railroads and airplanes to DeLong and his neophilic ilk.