Ed Felten distills the impact of computers on cultural production and the ensuing debate to its essence:

[W]hether IT is primarily a copying machine, or a creative tool

The answer to most reading this Creative Commons blog will be obvious, but Felten lays it out in great detail in a talk called Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media, which he apparently reprised last weekend. Audio, video and transcript from an earlier version are available under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.