The constitutional language of this reflects that intellectual property is the property of the public, but that to encourage creativity for a limited period creators had the right to control and make money for their work. They did this because they had problems with their former governments giving all intellectual property rights to monied interests.

The new laws, in order to be constitutional are not forever. They are “forever minus one day”.

I’m sure 100 years from now when our popular culture, literature and music becomes public domain, that it will have long since been destroyed.

Because of this law, who we are today will be lost in time. The copies we have of our music and movies will have long since turned to dust and no one can archive them.

The majority of the movies that entered the public domain after 28 years are “lost films”. What will happen after 100?

Anyhow.. I run retrovision.tv and so I keep my eye on what is going on with the public domain. We gave it all away to save Mickey Mouse for Disney.

Maybe we should have made a special law. It’s what they did for A. Hitchcock in the UK.

If it was that important for Disney to keep Mickey out of the public domain, we should have done something less detrimental to history.

“If these tactics are out of line, though, I don’t think it’s appropriate to blame the two prosecutors who happened to bring this case. What the prosecutors did here was what federal prosecutors often do.”

It would be unfair, I suppose, because prosecutors never, ever throw the book at someone? They never overcharge or inflate the misdeeds of other for public consumption?

No, I’d argue that singling out this team of prosecutors is exactly the right thing to do to send a message to their colleagues. Even better would be to come with, say, six other examples of egregious overcharging by prosecutors and label them the Swartz Seven, so that it’s not just the rich and famous who get their day in the court of public opinion. What would be the fate of the Swartz Seven? Their careers would be nicked a little, far less an outrage than the victims of overcharging who actually lose their freedom.

Would it be hypocritical to overcharge the prosecutors in this case, to blame them for Swartz’s death and anything that can thrown at them? Maybe. But unilateral disarmament is worse than hypocrisy. Too few options are on the table to motivate prosecutors to moderate their zeal.

It appears that the present configuration of IP/copy-right-protection laws, in our digitally-networked-algorithm age, are still being written and directed by the MEDICINE MEN in order to retain their sacrosanct control over knowledge, wealth and power.

If you don’t have a good job working for the MEDICINE MEN you may find yourself being defined as part of the problem, civil society augments not withstanding !

As technological acceleration catapults us and our networked algorithm-optimized economy into a new era of organic social interdependence our pivotal challenge is to translate that zeitgeist, that spirit of our time, into a new set of institutional structures and values that offer social efficacy in the context of our new organically-interdependent networked social environment.

If we allow those old “business as usual” MEDICINE NEN to drum visionary minds like Aaron Swartz out of the conversation it is at our own long term peril.

Failure starts at the top with a distracted “nose to the grindstone” democratic citizenry that repeatedly gets advertised(read duped) into electing too many visionless political prostitutes willing to capitulate to the wealth and power of our present day modern MEDICINE MEN.

Blaming low level legal courtiers and functionaries is somewhat counterproductive as many of them certainly do have the vision to appreciate the legislative box into which they have been placed.