“When elephants dance, it’s best to get out of the way. That’s exactly what’s happening now as the entertainment industry—the recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainly—attempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isn’t it?” Proposes a simple fix — recognition of artists’ moral rights to their intellectual property; reversion of the term of copyright to fourteen years, immediately and retroactively; and prohibiting corporations from owning copyrights:

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a “natural person” under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. It’s not too late to fix it.

Can it be done? The author points out how little it took in contributions for the media industry to ‘buy’ the Senate sponsors (Hollings et al) of the pending copy protection bill ( the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, or CBDTPA) and predicts, knowing who is most awash in entertainment industry money in the House, who myght soinsor a companion bill there; could we buy back our rights? Ironically, he notes, since the bill would still have to be signed nto law, “installed President Bush just may be the fly in this particular ointment. Like most conservatives, he sees the entertainment industry as a liberal bastion, remember, and a political force that’s not necessarily aligned with his larger agenda.” Arts & Farces