Commentary:

Copyright law...

...an incredibly dull topic on the face of it, but as someone who has been directly involved for decades in the creation of different kinds of Intellectual Property (known as IP among the cognoscenti... or geeks as I call them) from the book I published back in 1986 to the patents I've filed over the last 15 years, I've had a deep interest in the topic. This seemingly colorless area of law actually made the headlines briefly with the spectacular rise and fall of Napster and online trading of MP3 music files. Wired News had an article posted today on a group that is trying to educate college students on copyright law, and how it is being abused by corporations.

I've been concerned about how copyright law has been extended and expanded in the last decade, if only for the fact that it is now far longer before works enter the public domain, if ever. I think this is bad for the culture as a whole, because works of merit may not be distributed (music not re-released, books not reprinted, ect.) because there is not enough money in it for the copyright holder, but they won't allow the work to move to the public domain where it can be distributed freely by anyone with no violation of the law. That is the fast-track to obscurity. The Induce Act is particularly concerning because it inhibits the sale of technology that might allow a copyright protection to be circumvented by making the manufacturer of the device used to circumvent the copyright protection liable for the circumvention. In other words, it would create a situation where the manufacturers of VCRs, photocopiers, and even cameras would be liable for any act of copyright violation by a user of their product. To me, this begins to intrude upon both free speech and the simple ability to do what you want as long as your act is not illegal, in other words it destroys the libertarian (small "L") ideal that was used to guide the writing of the Constitution. If we extend liability to the point where it is not really possible to sell something because it is possible to perform an illegal act with it, the possible extensions of that mindset are staggering.

So, in the end, copyright law isn't quite as dull in it's implications, is it?