Copyright law is simple and yet complex, fundamentally necessary and yet fundamentally broken, for the public good and yet a detriment to the public’s intellectual well-being. The basis for the law is simple enough; the Constitution grants Congress the power:
“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.”
From this single sentence springs the laws of copyrights and patents, and all the intertwined legal baggage we are now forced to associate with them. The Founding Fathers were incredibly skilled literary craftsmen — they did not waste, nor did they use unnecessary words. The inclusion of limited in the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution is very important. Over time “limited” has come to mean less and less, with the current US copyright term being the life of the author plus 70 years. Considering copyright law was designed to “promote progress”, one truly struggles to determine how a term of up to 150 years promotes anything besides individual profit. This is the first way that copyright law is broken: When a limited term is forever extended, is it really limited in the first place? However, this isn’t the only way copyright law has eroded the rights of the public (that pesky group of people which usually fund the works protected by copyright). Fair use law is also under attack, though such attacks are subversive, designed to avoid being labeled as such. Unfortunately, and very intentionally, copyright reform has never been a “hot item” on a political platform. As such, the only way to restore copyright law to its original intent is through education, and depending on an educated public has rarely, if ever in modern society, been a reliable mechanism to enact change.
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