On Thu, 24 May 2001, Ted Friedman wrote:
corporations "own" the culture that most of us consume. (Although I don't see how they're the "authors" the constution's copyright provision was designed to protect.)
ed: well, a lot of this goes back to BAD legislative decisions, in the 20's & 30's that sold the public (us) down the river with regard to rights. The airwaves were virtually ceeded to big business, and then those corporations were given the constitutional rights and protections of private (individual) citizens (rather than being constrained by laws that would protect the public right and protect us from big business). Put the "privitization" of the airwaves together with granting large corporate entities individual consitutional rights, and ya got a recipe for BAD intellectual property rights action down the road....where we now live. Though oh-so-long-ago, our legislators did it to ourselves (so to speak).