Week 5 Response

Well I found :Owning the Past to be terribly fascinating. I had not been fully aware of how long the copyright battle had been going on, nor that the Constitution originally specifically stipulated how many years a copyright is good for. Since then, many things have been done that was never envisioned outside the Constitution. Everything from Social Security to welfare programs have been done even though the original U.S Constitution doesn't spell that out. So in this case, the authors, and nowadays, the corporations are using that background to push the boundaries. The wikipedia article on this is basically a general "this is what this is" type of article with good information not much different then what Dr. Cohen was expressing.

One of the main questions being asked, is what exactly did the framers have in mind? Did they mean what they put literally and did they foresee any of the current arguments Against it. Personally I think they meant what they said, the founders wanted to make sure good inventions like the Cotton Gin would be free at some point for the benefit of all. Creative Commons is an interesting project, in that you have an attempt to legally stick to the copyright laws, no matter how ridiculous, and help users do that and still provide material. I find it useful, in that I have some experience using it, and useful in seeing and learning what it means to follow these laws. Finally on the matter with Oregon, I found that whole thing utterly ridiculous, I mean going after people using the law, because they published the law? How far I asked myself, does this copyright thing have to go? And perhaps Oregon got a little hasty and got caught up in the Sonny Bono era that they weren't thinking straight.

So overall, I liked Creative Commons and what they are attempting to do, even if it seems a little impossible in certain respects, and I don't think Oregon was or is thinking straight about their case, and could possibly lose it eventually.