Re: News Flash
The actual language in the constitution states that "The Congress shall
have the power to ... promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,
by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Interestingly, I've read that this legal logic here was to give the
authors reason to publish their ideas. They figured that early in the
birth of our country everyone was out to make money via hard work and
entrepenurial sorts of endeavors. In order to prevent the arts and
sciences from being neglected they tried to create a legal stance upon
which they could make a living. Note, this is close on the heals of
the enlightenment where most of the arts and sciences progressed at
the largesse of church and monarchy. Being America, we wanted to
provide a living for these artists and scientists, other wise or
country would suffer. Now, its come full circle and the very thing
meant to help nurture the scientific and artistic community has become
soley a matter of economis and clearly hurts the communal aspect of
information sharing.
I actually wrote a article about this in the CACM a couple of years back.
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