Our copyright law was originally set up to protect authors and other creators, but it was limited in that copyright was mandated to expire in a reasonable time (20 years) and the ownership of any published work became public, a cultural resource for everyone. Now, copyright has been extended to 70 years and is renewable by potentially immortal, or should that be immoral, companies, well beyond the life of the author. Business wants to own and sell everything, and that is simply immoral. Napster was a revolt against this, although most users weren't totally aware of it. They just wanted to trade music, not sell it, so calling it piracy is simply a lie. Sure, it deprived the music publishers of some potential revenue from single sales, but that was not piracy. Piracy is copying and selling a work as if it is yours.

The new copyright laws have weakened the principle of Fair Use, and business wants to do away with it, especially for digital reproduction. Fair Use allows you to quote a small part of a work, perhaps in a review, academic paper or scholarly book, without permission or payment to the author or publisher, but with attribution or it would be plagarism. It has a long tradition preceding copyright law. Denying fair use is denying access to knowledge and the free flow of information. This is the rape of copyright law.

We should support copyright because it is a way of protecting creator's rights. I've been published and paid for it and I wouldn't want anyone publishing my work without my permission or altering it or stealing it by putting their name on it. It ought to be a violation of copyright to republish any work for sale without permission of the copyright holder. That's piracy. But there is a larger issue beyond copyright that protects any work from fraudulent attribution and plagiarism. An original work must be respected as its creator made it. However, a substantial modification of an existing work may be considered a new work, especially parody and satire, and should be protected.

The concept of intellectual property is undermining copyright law by underscoring our confusion over what should be protected under copyright and patent. With software and its ilk the line between an invention, a hard device or process, and text or code is worn through. Should software be copyrighted or patented? Is it art or invention? Under copyright and patent laws the knowledge or text is publically available, but protected and can be licensed by the owner. Current copyright law applied to software breaks the traditional conventions of public openness. The code is kept secret. This is a violation of the public trust.

The American people are being ripped off by the publishing and recording industries. Our right of Fair Use has been stripped away in the name of protecting intellectual property. Want to copy CDs? That right is being taken away with embedded copy protection. Many of these CDs won't play on a computer CD ROM. You once had the right to make copies for your own use. Now, you can't even own your music. The industry would like to charge you every time you play a song or watch a video. The music and video industry wants all software to have copy protection and all electronic devices to have encrypted security built in by law, and it will be a federal crime to disable it. No private industry should have the power to propose law that only favors their interests.

Let's look at the way music licensing is applied in law by the private organizations ASCAP and BMI and the RIAA standards organization. These organizations have listeners who record the number of times a song is played on a radio or TV station and bills them accordingly; that's OK in itself, but that compact is enforced by public laws, not private contracts. Thus any violation invokes criminal law rather than civil law, where this belongs. Recording broadcasts for personal use has been legal, but now that there is technology that would allow the industry to prevent that unless you pay, they want to force you to pay or go without.

It's time for the monolithic recording and media/entertainment industries, as we have known them, to die, and new, practical ways of producing, selling and distributing works be created. The Internet has shown us what some of those might be.

Now publishers are even going after public libraries. They want libraries to pay them a fee every time you check out a book. These executives and their lawyers are trying to bilk us for more money. It has nothing to do with authors earning more. It's just greed. Our public libraries are a cultural institution, providing us with knowledge. Libraries are a book Napster. You can check out a book for free, of course it's paid for by taxes, but that's a small amount, you return it, then someone else can check it out and read it. You don't have to buy a book to read it. If you own a book you can loan it out or give it to someone. You can reread it as many times as you like without paying. But publishers don't want us to do that anymore. It's the same way with music. You can copy your LPs, cassettes and CDs or loan them, but publishers want to stop that. There was a tradeoff in that an additional tax was added to blank cassettes to pay the recording industry for your privilege of copying music, but what if you didn't copy copyrighted music? You were unfairly charged. Traditionally, books were difficult to copy; it would cost more than buying a new one. It still is, but digital processing has changed that condition for most other media.

Publishers only package and distribute works; they don't create. Copyright protects this format and gives recognition to the creator. Most of the price of a work is in the packaging and distribution. Publishers rightly want their packages protected. That's OK, but what happens when they cease publication? Can you buy a copy? No. Perhaps you can borrow it from a library. Should publishers be allowed to withhold works from the people? I think not. The law should be that when a publisher ceases publication of a work it becomes public domain. That is in the spirit of the original copyright law.

Should a method that can break copyright or encryption be declared illegal when it also has legal uses? Mp3, file sharing and other copying methods have legal uses and should not be restricted, but the recording industry wants them secured or eliminated because of the potential loss of revenue, depriving us of our rights. The people should have more rights than an industry or any special interest. (see Skylarov case)

Nor should a program that can break encryption and decode proprietary information be itself declared illegal when it also has legitimate uses. That is a violation of freedom of speech. We don't declare guns illegal just because they can be used to illegally kill people, but they can also be used for good purposes.

Then there's a problem with trademarks. Why should anyone be allowed to trademark commonly used words and phrases that have been part of the language? This is hijacking our language for commercial gain. Shouldn't trademarks only be neonyms or new phrases?

Eventually, memorable literary phrases, advertising slogans, images and songs, even trademarked brand names, etc., become such a popular part of the public consciousness that they become common property regardless of legal ownership. The people appropriate what is good and no amount of laws can prevent it. This is the weakness in the rationale of intellectual property laws.

Patenting existing genes and other natural things is the most immoral decision in law. Patents were supposed to cover only human-created things, not discoveries that already exist in nature. I don't understand why you aren't mad that previously existing genes can be patented by others, including your own! But most of you probably don't know that. Once something has been in the public domain it cannot be appropriated for private ownership. Because your DNA is unique we should consider making law that confers legal ownership of your DNA exclusively to you. Then, you could sell it to the highest bidder.

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