Enjoyed the video. Copyrighting that break would have hurt our economy, and decreased the motivation of the artist to create new ones. It would give us the stultified economy of Renaissance England, with uncreative people maintaining monopoly strangleholds on sectors of the economy, and discouraging innovation. This is a bad idea from the very bad past.

Minnesota woman to appeal $220,000 RIAA award

6 seconds of breakbeat from 1969 inspired an entire genre of music, and has further become ubiquitous in the modern day.

The original artists haven’t seen a dime.

On one hand, it’s wonderful and amazing that, 20 years past its original cut, a piece of music has become so useful and widespread.

On the other hand, how do you deal with that? The equivalent of an invention received to little fanfare but which, 20 years later, becomes the foundation of an entire industry?

I don’t have any answers. Do you?

You invent a great procedure. You have a short time before everyone else, just as smart, learns how to do it. To stay rich, you have to invent another great improvement in two, not in twenty, years.

Which regime benefits both the surgeon and the patients more?

IP began when Elizabeth I gave her brilliantly inventive pals the Statute of Monopolies. The term represents the pace of change of 1623. The term should be shortened by a year, every year, until it reaches a more realistic five years or less.

After five years, try selling a copy of 99.999% of all songs, or inventions. You will need to pay people to take these off your hands. Only antique collectors will have any use for that obsolete junk. The value of the downloaded songs was about 99 cents each. That should have been the verdict. The outrageous verdict will not even reach the producers, the artists. I doubt it will even reach the record companies. It will reach only the lawyers. That verdict suspiciously resembles a legal fee, more than any other possible reasonable value.

Disresepecting IP would bring the USA no bonus from theft of technology, and wouldn’t change our nation’s business model to something easier to grow with.