Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryg5kFgarBo&feature=share

Dear Tripp,

Your world view would be hard to implement. Our whole culture is based on the concept of personal property and of the right to control that property. It is the basis of western law and a capitalistic society. Buying, selling and the control of merchandise is what it's all about.

What's happened here is that the concept of personal property has been corrupted by massive corporations. And since a large corporation is considered to be a person "under the law" and that "Person" has all the rights and privileges granted them by God and Government; they have the right to use all the resources at their disposal to transform their environment into something that supports their own growth and comfort.

All living things do this, it's only natural.

The problem with giving corporation these rights is that a corporation is essentially a communal life form. Not an individual. That gives the corporate entity a collection of advantages over individuals. Primarily being the ability to leverage all of its assets to an end, where an individual cannot compete.

In the case of the intellectual content industry; they have been able to, from very early on in our culture, write the rules that govern patent, copyright and corporate law. They have been able to lever their assets and move the government to their will and the create draconian control over IP that will last generations. In essence they are creating an inheritance for themselves, because a corporation can live forever (unless they go bankrupt and even then there are ways to preserve their property).

The original US copyright law was written as a part of the Constitution and granted the Congress the right to enact copyright law .

Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

This is known as the copyright clause and is the basis for all copyright law from the beginning of our republic. At that time copyright was only a whopping 14 years. Since then term of copyright has been changed many times to satisfy cultural and technological changes, more recently the 1998 Sonny Bono/Mickey Mouse Act which extended copyright on existing and future IP  to 75 and 120 years.

I won't bore you with a tic-toc of how we got from this single line in the Constitution to a perpetual copyright with heavy handed, monololistic civil and criminal penalties, but the fact is that we are here and there must be changes in the way that things are done.

But your point that content shouldn't be property goes against the Constitution and..... our.... basic.... culture.

So what do we do?

First: I think we should roll back the time that a work of art or science can be held privately, just because your grandfather doodled a mouse on a napkin and the neighorhood kids liked it so much that they were willing to pay just to see it, does not mean your doodle should support your family, or their families, or their investors in perpetuity.

Second: Return copyright enforcement to the civil courts, sunset most criminal penalties for copyright infringement except for all but the worst offenders. And in those cases throw the book at them.

Third: Limit the civil rights of Corporations. Corporations should not have access to the rights granted by Constitutional Bill of Rights and should be nothing more than an entity that is used to limit business' liabilities or for tax purposes.

I know that my answers to these problems have as much chance as do yours, but if they were used it would make for a more civil (pun intended) discourse and a freer society.

Thanks for reading and be well

Jimmer