Prof. Michael Madison notes the appointment of Janice Brown to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals bench (CNN: Senate Confirms Brown to Federal Judicial Post), and one of her opinions that copyfighters would be interested in (Janice Brown Confirmed). The case he cites is Intel v. Hamidi, in which Brown dissented from a majority ruling holding that Intel could not prevent a former employee from sending mass emails to current Intel employees. Her dissent shows quite the fondness for property metaphors:

Those who have contempt for grubby commerce and reverence for the rarified heights of intellectual discourse may applaud today's decision, but even the flow of ideas will be curtailed if the right to exclude is denied. As the Napster controversy revealed, creative individuals will be less inclined to develop intellectual property if they cannot limit the terms of its transmission. Similarly, if online newspapers cannot charge for access, they will be unable to pay the journalists and editorialists who generate ideas for public consumption.

This connection between the property right to objects and the property right to ideas and speech is not novel. James Madison observed, "a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property." (Madison, Property, Nat. Gazette (Mar. 27, 1792), reprinted in The Papers of James Madison (Rutland et al. edits., 1983) p. 266, quoted in McGinnis, The Once and Future Property- Based Vision of the First Amendment (1996) 63 U. Chi. L.Rev. 49, 65.) Likewise, "a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them." (Ibid.) Accordingly, "freedom of speech and property rights were seen simply as different aspects of an indivisible concept of liberty." (Id. at p. 63.)

The principles of both personal liberty and social utility should counsel us to usher the common law of property into the digital age.