Intellectual Property Barons.

Current copyright laws are trying to keep up with all the world-flattening forces on the Internet and other areas of technology, and they're stepping on a lot of toes in the process. While the original idea given during the United States' founding was to protect the progress of the arts and sciences, recent developments of the last century — and especially the last decade — have redefined copyright law to protect only certain parties' financial interest, while damaging that of others. Any company or product that enables or encourages media sharing can (and many have) come under fire, and some very useful inventions have been banned, in effect, on grounds that they can be abused to pirate media and software. I can slam a blender into my neighbor's head, but that doesn't mean blenders should be outlawed. If the legislative and judicial branches of our government are concerned about damage to the economy, it would be well to investigate how much is lost overall because of copyright lawsuits, compared to losses from file sharing and other media copying. Also of moral interest, it would be well to examine our copyright paradigm. Is it really wrong to copy and share the intellectual properties of others, or is it a social construct pressed upon the public by the elite? Until now I've only seen one side of the issue; I believe that creators of original works need the temporary monopoly provided by copyright; but now I see that copyright is not being used to protect creators as much as it is to stifle creativity and product awareness in order to protect the investments of large companies and their shareholders.