The Copyright Laws here, since we were a British colony before Independence, were based on English copyright laws, which were basically born out of an unholy alliance between the Stationers Guild ( a sort of big business printing consortium), and the English monarch. The monarch wanted to have some control over freedom of speech, and the Stationers Guild wanted to basically establish a cartel, and prevent others from competing with them for the rights to publish books.

From
http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html

"The history of American copyright law originated with the introduction of the printing press to England in the late fifteenth century. As the number of presses grew, authorities sought to control the publication of books by granting printers a near monopoly on publishing in England. The Licensing Act of 1662 confirmed that monopoly and established a register of licensed books to be administered by the Stationers' Company, a group of printers with the authority to censor publications. The 1662 act lapsed in 1695 leading to a relaxation of government censorship, and in 1710 Parliament enacted the Statute of Anne to address the concerns of English booksellers and printers. The 1710 act established the principles of authors' ownership of copyright and a fixed term of protection of copyrighted works (fourteen years, and renewable for fourteen more if the author was alive upon expiration). The statute prevented a monopoly on the part of the booksellers and created a "public domain" for literature by limiting terms of copyright and by ensuring that once a work was purchased the copyright owner no longer had control over its use. While the statute did provide for an author's copyright, the benefit was minimal because in order to be paid for a work an author had to assign it to a bookseller or publisher.

Since the Statute of Anne almost three hundred years ago, U.S. law has been revised to broaden the scope of copyright, to change the term of copyright protection, and to address new technologies. For several years, the U.S. has considered and acted on copyright reform. The Canadian government is considering copyright reform as well.

1787: U.S. Constitution

According to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, "the Congress shall have 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."


1790: Copyright Act of 1790
The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain." Major revisions to the act were implemented in 1831, 1870, 1909, and 1976.

1831: Revision of the Copyright Act

The term of protection of copyrighted works was extended to twenty-eight years with the possibility of a fourteen-year extension. Congress claimed that it extended the term in order to give American authors the same protection as those in Europe. The extension applied both to future works and those current works whose copyright had not expired.

1834: Wheaton v. Peters

The case arose from a dispute between the official reporter of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Richard Peters, and the previous reporter, Henry Wheaton. Peters began publishing "Condensed Reports" of cases decided during Wheaton's tenure and Wheaton sued. The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Peters argued that Wheaton had failed to properly obtain copyright, while Wheaton argued that authors were entitled to perpetual property rights in their works. Justice McLean delivered the majority decision, stating that "since the statute of 8 Anne, the literary property of an author in his works can only be asserted under the statute. . . . That an author, at common law, has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress against any one who deprives him of it, or by improperly obtaining a copy endeavours to realise a profit by its publication cannot be doubted; but this is a very different right from that which asserts a perpetual and exclusive property in the future publication of the work, after the author shall have published it to the world." The decision struck a decisive blow against the notion of copyright as a perpetual natural right, and the utilitarian view of copyright embodied in the U.S. Constitution prevailed, i.e., "that patents and copyrights are exclusive rights of limited duration, granted in order to serve the public interest in promoting the creation and dissemination of new works." See the amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by Tyler Ochoa and Mark Rose in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, May 20, 2002.


1841: Folsom v. Marsh
In a case brought before the Massachusetts Circuit Court in 1841, the owner and editor of a multi-volume collection of George Washington's letters sued Charles Upham for using hundreds of pages of the letters, in their entirety, in a volume on the life of Washington. Justice William Story found that Upham had infringed the owner's copyright in publishing some 350 pages of Washington's letters in his 866-page book. Upham argued that Washington's letters were not "proper subjects of copyright" because their publication would not harm the deceased author, and because they were not literary in nature. Story disagreed and held that letter writers and their designated heirs, not the persons to whom the letters are addressed, possess copyright in the letters they have written, no matter the content.

Upham also argued that he had "a right to abridge and select, and use the materials . . . for [his] work, which . . . is an original and new work, and that it constitutes, in no just sense, a piracy of the work of the plaintiffs." Again, Story disagreed, saying that Upham's work was "a selection of the entire contents of particular letters, from the whole collection or mass of letters of the work of the plaintiffs. . . . [and] that these letters are the most instructive, useful and interesting to be found in that large collection." In explaining the nature of the infringement, Story said, "It is certainly not necessary, to constitute an invasion of copyright, that the whole of a work should be copied, or even a large portion of it, in form or in substance. If so much is taken, that the value of the original is sensibly diminished, or the labors of the original author are substantially to an injurious extent appropriated by another, that is sufficient, in point of law, to constitute a piracy pro tanto" (my emphasis). The court's definition of what constituted a "justifiable use of the original materials" formed the basis of the "fair use" doctrine. Put another way, Story said that, "the question of piracy, often depend[s] upon a nice balance of the comparative use made in one of the materials of the other; the nature, extent, and value of the materials thus used; the objects of each work; and the degree to which each writer may be fairly presumed to have resorted to the same common sources of information, or to have exercised the same common diligence in the selection and arrangement of the materials."

1853: Stowe v. Thomas

Harriet Beecher Stowe sued F.W. Thomas, publisher of a German-language periodical, Die Freie Presse, in 1853. Thomas translated Uncle Tom's Cabin into German and sold it in the United States without the author's permission. Judge Robert Grier of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals explained in the decision that once an author published her or his work, "and given his thoughts, sentiments, knowledge or discoveries to the world, he can have no longer an exclusive possession of them." With regard to translations, he continued, "the same conceptions clothed in another language cannot constitute the same composition; nor can it be called a transcript or 'copy' of the same 'book.'" According to Siva Vaidhyanathan, the "antiproperty" rhetoric in the decision encouraged many American authors to take a stand in favor of copyright as property until the copyright law was revised in 1870 (Vaidhyanathan, 48-50). "


For those wanting to read the whole timeline of Copyright here in the United States, there is a much more complete list of dates and events at the above source, i.e.,
http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html .

Now, most people seem to understand and not have a lot of problems with the original copyright ideas. After all, it seems fair and reasonable that if someone invests quite a bit of time, money, inspiration, perspiration, and talent into producing an article of value, that perhaps there should be some protections in place against someone just suddenly claiming it is their invention or product, and trying to improperly benefit from the original work of another.

Perhaps what caused things to go sideways if you will, was in the invention and usage of the term "intellectual property". Wikipedia says that the term "intellectual property"...

"The term intellectual property appears to have originated in Europe during the 19th century. French author A. Nion mentions "propriété intellectuelle" in his Droits civils des auteurs, artistes et inventeurs, published in 1846, and there may well have been earlier uses of the term.

In 1847, a U.S. circuit court defined intellectual property as "the labors of the mind, productions and interests as much a man's own...as the wheat he cultivates." Woodbury & Minot, Rep. Cases Circuit Court of U.S., I. 56.

Worldwide, however, use of the term was uncommon until its use in the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which was established in 1967."
( The above from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property#History_of_the_term ).

This started moving the definition away from an actual product, such as a drawing, statue, printed book, etc., and toward the mere invention of an idea for example.

An important distinction between "intellectual property" and the older "copyright" was that, earlier, a copyrightable item must be fixed, and tangible. The "intellectual property" notion, introduced the idea that this "intellecutal property" , though not necessarily TANGIBLE, was a real and equal in the need for protection, as tangilbe items.

" The term intellectual property reflects the idea that the subject matter of IP is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that once established, such entitlements are treated, as far as possible, as equivalent to tangible property, and may be enforced as such by the courts. " (Ibid)

Quoting further from the article in Wikipedia, we find that there are many who are opposed to this "intellectual propety" idea.

"Controversy over term
In civil law jurisdictions, intellectual property has often been referred to as intellectual rights, traditionally a somewhat broader concept that has included moral rights and other personal protections that cannot be bought or sold. Use of the term intellectual rights has declined since the early 1980's, as use of the term intellectual property has increased.

An alternate term monopolies on information has emerged among those who argue against the "property" or "intellect" or "rights" assumptions, notably Richard Stallman - see below.

Another issue is that if intellectual property exists there must be a parallel concept of intellectual capital - capital (economics) being the property that permits more property to be created. This is a controversial notion that economists have no clear agreement on, so one refers to the "intellectual capital debate" rather than thinking of it as an actual capital asset. See more in the economic view section below, and the term instructional capital that avoids the controversy but applies only to patents and non-fiction copyright, so is not a full substitute.

Trademarks, trade secrets, regional declaration do not have a time limit while copyrights and patents are of limited time (patents: 20 years)

Arguments against the term
The term intellectual property is often explained as being problematic by some because the rights conferred by exclusive rights laws are in some ways more limited than the legal rights associated with property interests in physical goods (chattel) or land (real property). The presence of the word property in the term can be seen as favoring the position of proponents of the expansion of exclusive rights in intellectual products, who may thereby more readily draw on the rhetoric of property itself to remove the many natural and legal restrictions on exclusive rights which would be inappropriate if applied to physical goods. For instance, most nations grant copyrights for only limited terms. Additionally, the term is sometimes misunderstood to imply ownership of the copies themselves, or even the information contained in those copies. This would severely differ from physical property laws, which rarely restrict the sale or modification of physical copies of a work (something which many copyright laws do restrict).

A common argument against the term intellectual property is that information is fundamentally different from physical property in that a "stolen" idea or copy does not affect the original possession (see the tragedy of the commons). Another, more specific objection to the term, held by Richard Stallman, is that the term is confusing (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty). Stallman argues that the term implies a non-existent similarity between copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other forms of exclusive rights which makes clear thinking and discussion about various forms difficult. Furthermore, most legal systems, including that of the United States, hold that exclusive rights are a government grant, rather than a fundamental right held by citizens.

Though it is convenient for direct incentive beneficiaries to regard exclusive rights as akin to "property", items covered by exclusive rights are, by definition, not physical objects "ownable" in the traditional sense.

Stephan Kinsella, in his Journal of Libertarian Studies article "Against Intellectual Property" details his objection to Intellectual Property on the grounds that the term "property" implies scarcity, which may not be applicable to ideas.

Others point out that the law itself treats these rights differently than those involving physical property. To give three examples from US law, copyright infringement is not punishable by laws against theft or trespass, but rather by an entirely different set of laws with different penalties. Patent infringement is not a criminal offense although it may subject the infringer to civil liability. Willfully possessing stolen physical goods is a criminal offense while mere possessing of goods which infringe on copyright is not. Furthermore, in the United States physical property laws are generally part of state law, while copyright law is in the main measure federal.

Some proponents of the term argue that the law is simply recognising the reality of a situation. In some jurisdictions a lease of land (e.g. a flat or apartment) is regarded as intangible property in the same way that copyright is. In these cases too the law accepts that the property cannot be stolen - if someone moves into the flat and prevents you from living there they are not regarded as 'thieves of the lease' but as 'squatters' and the law provides different remedies. Identity theft is another example of the adaptation of physical property laws to intangible items, though that term itself is seen as problematic by some."
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The article at Wikipedia also gets into some new trends, and is well worth reading, and I would urge those interested in this, to read the original, full article.

There are those, mainly those I refer to as members of the "Copyright Cartel", who want
to raise ideas, the zeros and ones that make up a computer program, and lossy MP3s as being real property .

Obviously, this violates the common sense of the average person.

I can have all kinds of original content on my hard disk, and in a matter of minutes, can change all the contents of my drive. The magnetized and demagnetized bits are not real property. They are only a sort of phantom property...unreal, but having some qualities of real property.

Now, to show the difference, the hard drive itself is really my property, in the sense that it does not suddenly change into a rabbit and run off, or quit being a hard drive if I just decide it should be a monitor or something else. It is a tangible object, and if someone were to come into my house and take it when I am gone, that would be a real theft, in that I would be deprived of its use and value. On the other hand, if I had someone come in while I was not home, and they made a copy of my drive on another drive, obviously, the drive would not be stolen, but perhaps they would be guilty of trespass.

Of course, the Copyright Cartel wants to confuse people. They want to make it seem like somehow, digital copyrighted material is more valuable, or more deserving of aggressive legal protection than physical, analog media. For example, have we heard of ANY author bringing suit against any library patron for making unauthorized copies of their written, copyrighted works, using the library Xerox machine? Not one that I can think of has been found, and yet, we know people make unauthorized copies of copyrighted works in libraries, all day, every day, in libraries nationwide.

I think there needs to be a restatement of what is copyrightable, and what is real property, as opposed to the virtual, airy fairy wannabe world of the Copyright Cartel.

Additional reading is found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property99/history.html.