shayne, the primary argument for copyright is a "public good" one. The "public good" in this case being we get more original works with the copyright law than without it.

There is a natural inclination to say that authors should be rewarded for their work - and that is why copyright should exist. But we expect mothers, SES volunteers, life savers to put in the hours without reward, and I don't see why authors or indeed anybody else should treated any differently.

Another aspect of copyright is it's really there for the publishers. Publishers, and indeed anyone who has to invest large amounts of money wants some assurance of a return if they have done their job well. Their job being to find good works and publish them. Without copyright other publishers could cherry pick works that become popular. Its no accident that copyright laws were "invented" at the request of the owners of the printing press when it became commercially successful.

When copyright gets too long, the publishers are better off publishing older works that have a proven track record, rather than investing the risky business of publishing new works. Right now "Happy Birthday To You" is still under copyright. Clearly that is too long, and it is generally acknowledged. The author of a recent British government review of copyright law said just that - from purely an economic point of view copyright terms should be reduced. However, he also said that was politically untenable, so his report recommended they remain unchanged, which is what happened. (Sorry - a quick search didn't yield a link.)

With the internet, the whole "its takes a lot of money to publish" thing vanishes for many classes of work - music and books being two. With the real underpinnings of copyright law being swept away we are seeing turmoil. The only thing that springs to mind that still does require a large up-front investment is the movie. If all copyright law were swept away, that would be the end of movies as we know them, I think. That would be a shame.

But I don't think the long term outlook is as bad as the author makes out. The old dinosaurs are on the way out, as this quote shows:

EMI ... invited a group of teenagers into its London headquarters to ask them about their music consumption habits. At the end they were thanked and asked to help themselves to a big pile of EMI CDs on the table. None of the teenagers took any. They didn't want them. "That's when we realised the game was up," says one of the EMI executives.

EMI has since been taken over.

A major part of a music company's business is publicity. So rather than go down with dignity like the makers of the Telix or the fax machine, they are screaming and ranting, taking as many people with them as they can, and blaming everyone but themselves. But you can't treat your customers like dirt (as in suing them, and making your product hard to use with DRM) in the face of strong competition. It appears that DRM is already on the wane. Suing your customers can't be far behind.

The music industry is primarily responsible for the mess we see now. When it dies so will a lot of the agro. The great thing about all the noise they are making is that the lessons learnt on what does and does not work will be heard by all. This is another reason I am optimistic for the future.

It is a bit of a shame we got dragged into this at all. Wild speculation on my part puts it down to US politics, where the definition of a "good senator" is when he is bought, he stays bought. Disney knows how to buy senators, it seems. But I felt more than disappointment when I saw the Howard government drag us into this mess by adopting US copyright laws as part of the Free Trade agreement with the US. We Aussies are noted around the world for making sensible decisions. That wasn't one of them.