The Kings Warrant
It seems to me to be a mixture of things, the rights conscious Americans think copyright is a right like those others in the Bill of Rights, but it was as with other intellectual property rights, a trade agreement between 'the monarch', 'the people' and the creator or inventor. They would get the recognition of creator and the legal ability to sue in civil court to protect a license to publish or manufacture their work, 'the people', citizens of said state or country, would after a period of time get the work to freely enjoy with out further limitation.
Until recently the US citizen had to specifically score their work before rights could be sought, it changed to the same method as Australia only about 10 years ago.
Term of copyright: Authors Lifetime + 50 years, The problem is, if the work was created for a company or if a company acquired the rights, what rights do they get as the company has no human lifetime but an unnatural indefinite existence possibly forever.
And with much music written by African American slaves, were they fairly compensated or able to copyright their work, where they would have under todays' laws received automatic copyright upon the works performance and/or documentation or recording.
There are only a finite quantity of letters in the alphabet or notes in the musical scale and yet with the advent of industry and electronic media we are producing an ever growing quantity, the creation of this copyright-able material is growing exponentially, already governments has curtailed their decision to archive the internet.
So perhaps a shorter type of copyright is in order, one that pays for it's own storage into the future, or it would disappear under the weight of the new.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
