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Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing" copyright and patent protection for authors and inventors.
I oppose the unconstitutional transfer of authority over copyright and patent policy from Congress to other agencies, domestic or foreign.
One of the problems we have witnessed in the internet age, is the use of federal courts to intimidate and prosecute kids and their families for casual file transfer with peer to peer networking. Congress has been basically been bought off by the music and software industry. This is a ridiculous use of the federal courts to bully families, when there is absolutely no evidence that the proliferation of digital music availability through peer to peer networking has had any negative impact on sales and profits of the music industry. The same holds true for the movie and software industry.
The truth is, most people who download "pirated" multimedia and software would never purchase the product anyway. To believe that the kid barely out of school would really spend $2,500.00 on Adobe CS3 Master collection, but won't because he found an illegal copy on the internet is ridiculous.
Prosecution for copyright infringement should be limited to those people or businesses that profit from the use and/or distribution of the multimedia or software. Certainly, if you sell the multimedia or software, then you should be prosecuted. If a business makes money from the use of the software or multimedia, then they should be prosecuted for the piracy. Those who simply distribute the multimedia or software at no charge (while I in no way condone such) should not be dragged into the federal courts. To use the federal government and its police powers to bully kids and their parents for peer to peer media swapping is a serious overreaching of the authority granted by the Constitution.
Again, I am certainly not condoning the practice of even casual software and multimedia piracy, but to use our massive federal government to harass and torment families for an act that there is NO PROOF has caused any losses to the industry is simply wrong and needs to be halted.
I do not support the notion of applying patents to intangibles such as "Software". Software is already fully protected with copyright laws, so to use patent law to protect software is an obvious waste of resources. If we allow software to be patented, then when will we start patenting other results of "thought." How about patenting unique sports offense or defense strategies? How about patenting the way we use our tools (I was an electrician at one time.) We could go on and on finding other ways to patent the results of the way we think and work, the process we develop, etc. Where will this end?
Not only is the notion of Software patents absurd, its current use is actually a detriment to the software industry. I am opposed to the issuance of patents on software.