As time progressed less work was done by individuals and more was done as part of a corporate effort. This was brought to a head by Disney when their copyright on Mickey Mouse was in danger of expiring. Since a corporation can live forever, should their copyright last forever as well? Restricting use by others can stifle creativity. For example, there have been many works created using the Sherlock Holmes character, some of which were quite good in their own right. So should the movies that Disney made retain their copyright while the character itself becomes public domain at some point? Or, perhaps, it should be the other way around? I could issue copies of the Disney movies from the 1920's, but I can't make new ones using the character. What about parodies and literary criticism? Suppose I wanted to make a film about Walt Disney and wanted to portray him as Mickey Mouse as a comment on the quality of his products?

This leads into the related issue of who owns a person's persona. When IBM wanted to use Charlie Chaplin in a series of commercials it had to pay his estate for permission. When does the right to a persona cease? If present practices were in place several hundred years ago would school children need to pay a fee to portray Washington or Lincoln in a school play? The Martin Luther King "I have a dream" speech is copyright and can't be used without permission. This has provided a source of income to his family, but what about the impact on history?

With on-line access things become even more difficult to limit. Blogs, for example, frequently copy parts, or all, of copyrighted works as part of a new posting. This violates the traditional "fair use" doctrines which permit short excerpts as in book reviews. With electronic cut and paste this abuse is almost impossible to monitor. I can track when someone links to one of the photographs on my web site, but not when they download it and use it elsewhere. By use of the "img" tag it is possible to place an image into a web page in such a way as to appear that it is part of the document. This is widely considered an abuse, but the search engines have been able to claim "fair use" since they only show a small version. This seems to be stretching the point in favor of the larger enterprises.

As tricky as the copyright issues are, the patent and trade secret policies are even worse. When most inventions were mechanical items, or chemical processes the patent idea was well defined. In addition the time taken to obtain a patent was short enough so that it could be used for quite a few years until it expired. Now patents have been extended to anything which can be sold. We have patents on "business practices", algorithms, and DNA sequences. Even things like novel uses for existing natural substances get patents. The areas with the most impact are drugs and crops. By patenting drugs, rather than keeping the process of making a compound a trade secret, companies now control the distribution and price of important items. We have all seen the desperation of third world countries where AIDS drugs have been artificially restricted. Private firms are now literally killing people for profit.

The issue with patented life forms is another case of extending a concept past its original intent. Patented crops can only be used under contract from the owner. The contracts restrict things like keeping seed for replanting for subsequent years. In addition many of the crops are herbicide resistant and thus must be used with matching weed killers. So the patent owner gets to determine how its product is used by the farmer.

Patents for "business processes" have also gotten out of hand. Amazon was able to patent the concept of pushing a single on-screen button to complete a purchase. Where is the innovation? Where is the concept of "non-obvious" invention? Where is even the "invention"? Patent examiners are evaluated by how many applications they review. So, for their own benefit it pays to approve them quickly. If they disapprove there is always the chance of an appeal and time-consuming re-evaluation of their decision. It is much easier to leave it to a competitor to challenge the validity in court (if they have enough money) where it is somebody else's problem.

Because of the ease of copying on-line material the business world has focused on restricting access. This effort goes by the euphemism "digital rights management" (DRM). What it means is that, for the first time, the buyer doesn't have control of the item purchased. When I buy a book I can read it again whenever I wish. I can lend it someone, or re-sell it. I can cut it up and use it for wallpaper if I wish. With DRM I will only be able to read my book (or view a movie, or listen to a song) with the appropriate hardware/software and license. If my license expires, or the government decides that the item is "subversive" so that they force the vendor to invalidate the license, I no longer have access to the item that I purchased, even if it is in my physical possession. Recent legislation makes it a crime to even try to figure out how the DRM system works, let alone circumvent it. Those who are so pleased with Itunes and the like may suddenly find their investment gone if the vendor ceases to support the product. The protests about DRM have been mostly from those wanting uncontrolled entertainment, but the political and social aspects of information control are much more serious.

The recent issues of Google and others acquiescing to the censorship demands of China is just a foretaste of what may be coming. Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" anticipated a society where owning books would be controlled. The rebels got around the restriction by memorizing them. How many cases of important works being hidden from the authorities can we recall from history? At least when they were rediscovered the works were restored. What will we hide from dictatorships when the material is rendered unusable by DRM techniques?

The next frontier will be stem cell research and custom genetic modifications. If these items are restricted will the rights owners be able to kill people at will by pricing the treatments out of reach? How much would a person be willing to pay for a treatment which regrows damaged spinal cords? The issue is not too far off. There is a new cancer drug for which the rights holder wants $20,000 per month. Insurance companies are refusing to pay, claiming it is not "approved". This is not a case of insufficient material being available, it is just a case of the rights holder preferring to kill people rather than compromise their profits.

The pendulum has swung too far towards those who control intellectual property rights. With the money they make off restricting access they can manipulate the political process so that the common good is no longer served. The idea of copyright and patent protection was to foster innovation by giving people the chance to make a reasonable return on their creative work, but only for a limited time. Then their work got added to the store of human knowledge to be built upon by those who followed. This has now been turned on its head. Those with the smallest idea wish to preserve their rights for ever, or to make it impossible to build upon prior art. Once again the profit of the few trumps the gains of humanity at large.