Copyright
Businesses that benefit from copyright have repeatedly pushed congress to extend copyrights to the point where the public interest is damaged. Copyright can reasonably protect artists and creators when they take action to request it, but copyright is abused to the point that innovation and progress are stifled. Very little ever falls into the public domain.
The public has an interest in seeing works move into the public domain after a reasonable period has passed for commercial gain. Abandoned and orphaned works should default into the public domain instead of being locked up indefinitely.
Legislation like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) strips the consumer of their rights to own and modify their purchased property. DMCA abuse has been leveraged against everything from real-estate listings to restricting competitors. If the DMCA had been present before this millennium, it is possible that Compaq would have never been able to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS and jumpstart the personal computing revolution.
The DMCA has also been an undue burden upon Internet Service Providers. Under provisions of this law, ISPs are turned into unpaid copyright police, investigating every possible copyright violation, real and imagined. This is all fine and good for the requestor, but the ISP should be compensated for each and every request.
Copyright law is also out of balance with respect to computer software. A key rationale underlying copyright is that it encourages the spread of ideas, by allowing authors to publish their work without losing control of it. Software is different from books in that it inherently provides a way for creators to publish without revealing the contained ideas. Book authors can learn from one anothers' published works, but software authors cannot learn from the work of others that is published without source code. Software authors do need protection, but the present approach allows them to obtain government-enforced, publicly-funded protection while also ensuring that their code will never see the light of day. A careful re-evaluation is in order.
Problems Resulting From the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Pete Ashdown Comments on Orphan Works to the Copyright Office
FedEx Invokes DMCA Against Individual Making Furniture out of FedEx Boxes
