In response to these developments, a protest movement is forming, made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of foiling ''piracy'' will have disastrous consequences for society -- hindering the ability to experiment and create and eroding our democratic freedoms. This group of reformers, which Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, calls the ''free culture movement,'' might also be thought of as the ''Copy Left'' (to borrow a term originally used by software programmers to signal that their product bore fewer than the usual amount of copyright restrictions). Lawyers and professors at the nation's top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren't wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative. While the American copyright system was designed to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being used to squelch it. They see themselves as fighting for a traditional understanding of intellectual property in the face of a radical effort to turn copyright law into a tool for hoarding ideas. ''The notion that intellectual property rights should never expire, and works never enter the public domain -- this is the truly fanatical and unconstitutional position,'' says Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the intellectual hub of the Copy Left.