http://techdirt.com/articles/20091222/0310397462.shtmlGreat stuff.
"For nearly all of the history of copyright law, the law itself has been designed by and for a certain group of middlemen -- even as it was officially
supposed to be about creating incentives for the creation of new, quality content."
"For this reason, copyright law has changed radically over the past three centuries, as those middlemen repeatedly strove to ratchet up and increase their monopoly rents. However, with the introduction of the internet and the personal computer, something unfortunate happened to the middlemen. They discovered that suddenly this cozy process of middlemen and politicians constantly ratcheting up monopoly protections ran into a bit of a speedbump: that ratcheting up interfered with the daily lives of millions of people online. "
"Because of that, over the past few years, a growing group of people have become increasingly vocal, in pointing out that
the true purpose of copyright law should be to make sure it actually does increase the incentives for the creation of new works, rather than taking it on faith (and the sworn word of the middlemen). This has upset the middlemen greatly -- for historically they faced little to no opposition to their ongoing efforts to continually increase the monopoly rights granted to them. "
