[Air-l] Copyright and fair use -- further notes

[Ed Lamoureux]

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Ted Friedman wrote:
> corporations "own" the culture that most of us consume. (Although I
> don't see how they're the "authors" the constution's copyright provision
> was designed to protect.) 

ed:

well, a lot of this goes back to BAD legislative decisions, in the 20's &
30's that sold the public (us) down the river with regard to rights. The
airwaves were virtually ceeded to big business, and then those
corporations  were given the constitutional rights and protections of
private (individual) citizens (rather than being constrained
by laws that would protect the public right and protect us from big
business). Put the "privitization" of the airwaves together with granting
large corporate entities individual consitutional rights, and ya got a
recipe for BAD intellectual property rights action down the road....where
we now live.

Though oh-so-long-ago, our legislators did it to ourselves (so to speak).