I will have another go ...
David Tomlinson wrote:
Copyright was dreamed up by people I would humbly suggest were smarter
than most (if not all) of us—not to say they’re beyond criticism, but
that I would think long and hard about the ramifications of throwing
it all away for diving into it.
Statue of Anne (1710) was actually censorship.
We have the Hansard speeches, and they were worried about creating a
monopoly as was Jefferson in the USA
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm
Thomas Macaulay in Parliament in 1841
"A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of
thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But
it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years
gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a motive
as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the contrary, the
difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know how
faintly we are affected by the prospect of very distant advantages, even
when they are advantages which we may reasonably hope that we shall
ourselves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a
century after we are dead, by somebody, we know not by whom, perhaps by
somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no
motive at all to action."
[...]
"The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the
purpose of giving a bounty to writers."
As for the US constitution, we all know why copyright was created, to
compensate authors, and to promote science and the useful arts.
We have to question, does it meet the ends, it certainly compensates
authors, but can we not achieve the ends through the doctrine of first
sale (most profits come in the first three months).
Promoting science and the useful arts.
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patrev.pdf
Nobel prise for economics indicating that patents do not meet this end.
It is hard to see how copyright succeeds in this context.
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