There are two really interesting projects going on this week. I'll offer some commentary on each of them once they've concluded, but in the meantime you should keep an eye on the unfolding events.

Economist Debates: Copyright and wrongs
The Economist is having a week long online debate on copyright. The format is sort of a modified Oxford-style debate, updated for the web (think "Intelligence Squared" in blog form), complete with viewer voting. The proposition is that existing copyright laws do more harm than good. So far we've seen opening arguments and a "guest" opinion, but I'm looking forward to the Rebuttal period on Friday. The debate will conclude on Friday May 15th.

Cato Unbound: Ten Years of Code
Meanwhile, the Cato Institute is running a retrospective debate on Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, commemorating the book's 10th year. The original book ended with a chapter called "What Declan Doesn't Get," so they kicked off this debate with Declan McCullagh's lead essay, "What Larry Didn't Get" -

Lessig’s predictions of private sector abuses proved to be a bit wide of the mark. Code claimed that commercial firms “will push for a certificate architecture that would enable its own form of control” and that would “enable some forms of state control.” Instead, Microsoft Passport (now Windows Live ID) died an unlamented death. Code fretted that over time, “code writing becomes commercial” and “the product of a smaller number of large companies,” which has not happened yet, and would not obviously pose a threat even if it had.

Jonathan Zittrain's response is absolutely brilliant, but seems to have vanished from the site temporarily. I'll add a link when it comes back.

The Code debate will continue through next week, as well, with contributions from Adam Thierer and, finally, Lessig himself.

Again, I'll revisit both of these debates later in the month.