Copyright laws are about to destroy the creativity

A guy named Lawrence Lessig, a proffesor at Stanford University is behind the creativeCommons.org project which allows authors to share their inventions, music, books etc. The idea is to allow people to use your product with no fear of a copyright infringement. Acts like the DMCA voted in by the Clinton administration a few years ago have even abolished the so popular “fair use”. There is a great presentation I found on the subject at: http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/free.html (8MB). It’s worth having a look at as it will give you a broader idea of how patents, laws and modern technology combined together can destroy future creativity. Just think about it… every creativity lies on an idea from the past in some respect. If the past is regulated creativity would be in trouble since you would have to pay for every single copyrighted or patented element. Earlier this year I heard of a case where the US patent bureau was considering a patent on patterns of software coding, so if you are programmer that uses a similiar approach already patented by Adobe, Microsoft etc. then you have to pay first. As you will see in the presentation Bill Gates confesses that patents limit the creativity, but they do bring in a lot of money in terms of royalties plus a future extension of a legalized monopoly. So no doubt Microsoft policy is to patent as much as possible for things ludicrous as it may seem as how a mouse click is programmed in a software program.
Consider the fact that since 1770 when copyright was brought to the USA from England, you could hold it for no more than 14 years. With the latest amendments in the law you get a Life + 70 years of copyrights. This can easily mean over 100 years for whatever idea you come with and get commersialized to bring you cash-flows for generations to come into your family. Walt Disney invented the Micky Mouse based on a fair tale by the Grim brothers. But Walt business geniusity masterminded the patent holding for all his works, even thouigh he stole lots of ideas from the past. So in essense Walt Inc. can use your idea, but from there on you will have to pay them for whatver use. And since the USA generally supports the big corporation interests it extends the Micky Mouse copyright every time the date of its expiration approches. It was about to expire in 1998 but little earlier the law was amended and gave the corporation another 25 years of law-protected copyright.The mighty USA has now imposed a world-imposable copyright law. If a country needed to amend its copyright laws then the USA would pay it help to overcome the “struggle” just as it did with Bulgaria. We were given money from the usaid program and alike to help us “reform” our copyright laws so that they would further extend the right of US patents in each country they help them “reform” it