The right to property is one of the foundations of our society. It allows for people to create and share what they produce in order to enrich society and enrich themselves. This is why the Constitution protects property, both physical and intellectual. However, the Constitution does not express the desire for intellectual property, specifically copyrights and patents, to remain private for too long. This is for a number of reasons. While copyright laws and patents can potentially allow one to make a huge amount of profit, it is wholly unconstitutional for this profit-making to continue for prolonged periods of time with no end in sight. Copyright laws and patents were put in place so that people would be encouraged to create new things and share their myriad ideas, not so that they would be encouraged to have one good idea and spend the rest of their life charging other people for it. If one opts for the latter path, one is no longer being creative, and is no longer benefitting society. The Constitution was not created to protect those people. The Constitution was created to protect idea-sharing, not idea-hoarding. Copyright laws and patents exist so that people can reap some reward for sharing their ideas as incentive to do so. However, allowing them to reap said reward indefinitely defeats the purpose of having them share it. Unfortunately, the nature of our capitalist society is such that any means of producing large amounts of profit will be abused. As organizations who defy the framers' original intentions concerning Copyrights and Patents become richer, they have more resources available (namely, cash money) to influence the goings-on in Washington to be in their favor. This influence in turn allows them to keep their intellectual property private (and thus profitable) for longer. This cycle has led to the situation we are currently in. While many argue that this is how it should be, I say that our society's view of intellectual property has diverted from the path set forth by the framers.
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I agree with what Eric says on his blog. I think that copyright laws and patents should exist to protect the work of people and should encourage others to create something of their own. People should be able to share what they have done without worrying about it getting stolen or copied. Unfortunately the nature of our capitalistic society has now made copyright laws a source of gaining profit. People now create something and expect to make money off of it for a long period of time. This takes away from the competition and encouragement of new ideas and therefore negatively effects the evolution of our society. I think that these laws are absolutely necessary for protection purposes but I think that they are taken advantage of and only seen as a way to make a quick penny. I hope that people continue to create new things and express themselves because that is what is healthy for a society. I guess we cannot deny the fact that people are always going to try to find a way to make money though.
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