We all need to realize who the beneficiaries of these overly-complex laws are, and that is the incumbent old-media intermediaries. Having web-pages on the anonymous part of the Internet be able to be cached, mirrored, indexed and viewed without additional payment or permission is major competition for the old-media content industry who believe that all creativity must have per-unity royalty payments. These incumbent special interests want to eradicate all competition by forcing everyone to use their business model, and to only be able to use technologies which they control.

This is a 10+ year old debate now that was launched in the USA by the USPTO with their “Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure” from 1995
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/

Simplistic logic: unless all new media was modified legally and technically to retain the limitations of the old media (primarily centralized control), then no content would be created. While this is obviously nonsense, governments have been buying into this nonsense with Canada’s Bill C-60 just being the latest round.

Whether the new-media genie is put back into the bottle is up to us. We must get politically involved and turn this mess around.

Then when the patent office sent me the letter informing me that i’d succeeded, i’d sue them for breaching my patent on writing… Because that’s what it would be. And hieroglyphics etc etc etc.

As long as i applied for it with the US patent office i have no doubt the morons would grant it. Hell i’d probly get it past most of the other patent offices around the world too.

We need a total kick of all parties in the US and an independent party for a turn in the White House, if for no other reason than to declare that the voters have had enough and that politics is about running the country, not running the country into the ground. A steady onslaught of just such bills has resulted in much of what the US has today in laws. Those that were purchased straight out, had well known problems as the one mentioned above and the open and close quick ramrod vote doesn’t leave time to fix it. Nor does the lack of involvement with both parties in the crafting help either.

I for one am tired of seeing the country go to hell in a handbasket as our legislators cater to the corporations at the expense of the citzen. Without our aid they can’t stay in office long enough to do the damage they are doing now. I for one say vote every Washington critter out of there and put totally new faces in. Term limits to go with it so that political dynasties can’t be formed.

From one that is fed up and had enough…