You really should read Stephan's paper, he's a lawyer you know. You'd get along well with him, hehe.

I had a random thought about copyright a few days ago.

You've probably heard it said: You don't write a book to become famous. You become famous and then you write (i.e. publish) a book.

The U.S. Constitution grants copyright authority to Congress to propogate/protect/encourage the arts.

You've heard it said that artists/writers need copyright protection. Without such protection, obviously, there'd be tons and tons of brilliant, necessary, helpful, and downright “the-world-would-be-a-worse-place-without-these” writings, etc., that would not exist. (Oh, sad world!)

What copyright protection did Shakespeare have? Bach?

How worse off would the world be without the plethora of books by famous idiots whose books are only published because they're famous? What of the millions of us “writers” who write billions of books without a hope of making a dime off them, copyright protection or no? Does the genius stop writing because his genius won't result in quite as much money?