Re: DRM and excessive copyright strike again!
I agree with most of what you say, but your history is not accurate:
"At least not permanently stopped, remember that even the almighty (at the time) Catholic Church was effectively toppled -- this had to happen before the great scientific and cultural revolutions could occur."
Not really, there were common causes of both - the invention of printing, increased trade, increased wealth.
The only economist I know of to actually try to analyse this (Rufus Pollock) came up with a 15 year durations as optimal. Its looks about right from a simpler point of view too because under any reasonable assumptions the NPV of cashflows more than 15 years out is pretty small.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
