If you don’t follow copyright law (and it’s kid brother ‘intellectual property’ law) in this country, you’re missing out on some good times. Well… good times if you’re a multinational recording/movie/media industry. Long story short, copyright now lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years or so. Unless you extend it. Why so long, you ask? I’ll let congress answer :

“The purpose of the bill is to ensure adequate copyright protection for American works in foreign nations and the continued economic benefits of a healthy surplus balance of trade in the exploitation of copyrighted works. “

That appears to conflict with the purpose of copyrights according to … well… an education, which apparently uses the Constitution and history as a source (I do like how Oklahoma State calls it the ‘411′…):

“The primary purpose of copyright law is not so much to protect the economic interests of the authors and artists, but rather to promote the progress of the useful arts—that is knowledge and creative works—by providing an incentive for the creation through giving the creative community exclusive rights in their works for a limited period.”

Well so what? Big deal, most of us say. Probably liberal propaganda by people who hate freedom anyway, and it doesn’t really effect me, we argue. Well - here’s the thing. It’s digging around and under the foundation of our country - and fast. PSHAW you say! Ridiculous! OUT-RRRAGIOUS [shakes cane violently, almost losing top hat and slipping on mustache wax]! Really?

The DMCA (Digital Millinium Copyright Act) criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control to a copyrighted work - or talking about how to do so [strike free speech]. Diebold, maker of electronic voting machines, used the DMCA to shut down blackboxvoting.org (not for long) after it posted Diebold internal memo’s that were… incriminating [strike whistle blowing]. Diebold not ringing a bell? Someone else’s problem maybe? That’s the company that had Bruce Funk, an elected official of Emery County, Utah, locked out of his office for finding gross security problems with their equipment [strike.. elected government officials?]. The DMCA limits ‘fair use’ (your right to make a backup of your DVD’s, music, etc.) because in most cases, you’ll have to bypass the copy-control embedded in the media. That makes you a criminal for exercising your rights [strike fair use]. And it can be used to silence critics who use bad satire (uh oh), as Dow Chemical did [strike dissent]. It can even stop you from learning to play the guitar [strike... freebird... I might be ok with this one].
Copyright infringement can also be used to enforce the Patriot Act. Wait, WHAT?! Yes, sure enough, if you violate a copyright, you might just be a terrorist. Trademark infringement (and as it turns out, an expired trademark) can bring the department of homeland security to your toy store. Webcasters are pretty much out of business.

The point is, copyright law is the cornerstone of an intellectual lock down of our culture and our country (in direct conflict with the constitution I might add). A few more extensions and additions will simply criminalize public discourse if you, the citizen, bothers to talk about current events. Current of course, being relative. Consider that Happy Birthday was first published in 1893, but singing it here could get us taken down.

In 1790, the first US copyright act was signed into law by our first President. It granted a period of 14 years. It turns out, at least mathematically, they were right.