Everything Bad Online Starts With the DMCA

The Tyranny of Copyright?: "Lawyers and professors at the nation's top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren't wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative."

As an aspiring writer (of some sort or another), I am most definitely not opposed to copyrights in general. People who put in the time and effort to create something deserve to be able to control how it is used, at least for as long as they live. I'm not saying I need to make money from all my work, but I wouldn't want anyone else taking credit or profiting from it. Without copyrights (and patents, too), people with brillant ideas can be taken advantage of.

But copyright and patent abuse these days has simply gotten out of hand. Just about every day on Slashdot, there's a story about how some monolithic corporation is threatening people with lawsuits under the DMCA or about how some other company is trying to patent some hardly unique concept (one-click ordering, anyone?) or to enforce a long-neglected claim purchased from someone else (cough-SBC-cough). These sort of claims aren't protecting artists; they're squeezing money out of innocent people for the sake of some executive's bonus.