I suggest that we need to change our entire frame of reference. Rather than starting out with the status quo and arguing over how to tweak it slightly–a little tighter here, a little looser there–I believe we need to mentally jump to the opposite extreme from our current laws and our long-accustomed practices.
Imagine, hypothetically, that the part of the US Constitution that I quoted earlier did not exist. Imagine that our government had neither a Copyright Office *http://www.lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/* nor a Patent and Trademark Office *http://www.uspto.gov/*. Suppose that, when someone did something with a piece of writing or art or music or film or software or whatever–some intellectual “property” that someone else had created–the government did absolutely nothing to intervene, and that no judge in any court granted any rights towards any “owner” of any intellectual “property” under any circumstances whatever.
What would happen in this environment? I caution the reader to avoid jumping to any hasty and simplistic conclusions; neither “total disaster” nor “nobody would ever create anything good again” are well-thought-out answers. “I personally would go broke” is also not a useful answer; as I said, we must get beyond narrow and personal financial interests, difficult though that may be. We must look at this alternate world with all the objectivity, clarity, and thoroughness we can possibly muster, for it is only by doing so that we can assemble in our own minds the solid core of intellectual property that is genuinely worth protecting, if such a solid core even exists.
Ultimately, I return to the points I raised on the first few pages of this essay. Anyone can move around any information that they want to, and nobody really seems to be changing that fact in spite of many efforts to do so. I personally have chosen not to fight the fact until the fact changes. Take what you want from these words. Do what you want with them. Change them, send them, mail them, post them, write them, draw them, paint them, speak them, sing them, chant them, record them, film them. This essay is yours, and everybody’s, and nobody’s.
Nobody owns this essay.