Unconstitutional,

jcworking123 — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 06:58:08 +0000

No nation should respect U.S. copyright laws unless U.S. copyright laws respect the U.S. constitution. It is inherently unfair that U.S. firms have been granted functionally unlimited copyright protections in obvious conflict with article 1. Section 8 of the constitution. Which says, among other things, 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;. In recent years the U.S. federal government has acted against the spirit and the letter of the founding document of our government. They have granted practically unlimited copyrights to record companies and film companies for no constitutionally justifiable reason. Record companies and film distributors are neither authors nor inventors. They are middle men whose chief claim to producing value is that they make the system of distributing a product more efficient, and thus less risky for the producer, the author, or inventor, and additionally cheaper for the public. New means of distribution and production are now available and those who have a vested interest in the status quo are writing the laws in an effort to protect their distribution channels. The governments and people of the rest of the world should not tolerate what is essentially a subsidy for the U.S. entertainment industry. The current system is broken and corrupt and should be replaced with a new system which respects the spirit and letter of the U.S. constitution. The rest of the world at present has accepted that the U.S. system is based on law and popular sovereignty. It is not. It is based on a backward looking and entrenched few special interests which apply enormous political influence on the U.S. government. The current U.S. copyright regime is of questionable constitutionality. Therefore all trade agreements which enforce this questionable copyright regime are in and of themselves questionable. I do not support the pirating of U.S. intellectual property, but I do believe that the legality of the U.S. copyright system be taken before the WTO and the U.S. supreme court for clarification.

open Democracy News Analysis - Unconstitutional, - Comments

Unconstitutional,