Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 12th, '05

[TankGirl]

Originally Posted by JackSpratts

As the People we ourselves grant the monopoly that media companies use so self-righteously. The privilege to prevent copying is found nowhere in nature, it is a wholly artificial construct, one that goes against the very fabric of life itself, and one designed for another age when distances were vast and knowledge was dragged at great cost across oceans of surf and plain into the great battles against ignorance. The monopoly we grant producers as an incentive under these so-called "copyright" laws are the sole province of the People; they belong to no-one else, are loaned with strict quid pro quos and are supposed to be protected and managed for the People by their elected representatives in Congress. These lawmakers were not sent to Washington to destroy these rights but to cultivate and update them so that the refinements more closely match the original laws intent. In the case of copyrights it is not to make foreign media conglomerates gargantuan and rich beyond the dreams of avarice but to allow ever more efficient transfers between writer and reader, father and son, mother and daughter, husband and wife, reader and friend.

Today as Congress increasingly sees in copyright law a vehicle to reduce and even eliminate any semblance of balance between creator and consumer, we must insist they step back and reevaluate the entire sorry thrust of modern intellectual policy or relinquish stewardship and return the right to the place from whence it sprang: We The People.

Great editorial, Jack, and a super job on the huge WiR issue!