Jonathan Zittrain writes about the copyright cage at Legal Affairs.

Copyright law was relatively simple when first enacted--don't publish a lot of copies of someone else's stuff. Since then, copyright restrictions have grown into twisted arcane labyrinths:

The limits on behavior enumerated in Title 17 have gone far beyond the wholesale copying of books, maps, and charts covered by the first copyright act of 1790. They extend to computer software, dances, boat hulls (delineated in a 1998 amendment as"the frame or body of a vessel including the deck of a vessel, exclusive of masts, sails, yards, and rigging"), and music—Congress covered performances in 1909 and copies of sound recordings in 1971. What the public can and can't do is described at a level of detail worthy of the most byzantine tax code.

For example, bars and restaurants that measure no more than 3,750 square feet (not including the parking lot, as long as the parking lot is used exclusively for parking purposes) can contain no more than four TVs (of no more than 55 inches diagonally) for their patrons to watch, as long as there is only one TV per room. The radio can be played through no more than six loudspeakers, with a limit of four per room, unless the restaurant in question is run by "a governmental body or a nonprofit agricultural or horticultural organization, in the course of an annual agricultural or horticultural fair or exhibition conducted by such body or organization." Then it's OK to use more speakers.

Individual use, however, has until now remained largely untouched. Public copying has traditionally been restrained convenience and conscience. But that has also changed with the introduction of the Internet.

The fact is that the Internet was built to copy things. Microsoft Windows's "Network Neighborhood" feature, for example, is simply a way to swap files. Almost every software application that capitalizes on this central functionality is therefore a Kinko's of sorts, and decreeing all search-and-copy software to be illegal is simply too sweeping a move for a court to make.

Current actions by the RIAA and proposals for draconian laws criminalizing casual copying emphasize the 'broken' nature of the current collection of copyright and intellectual property legislation and court rulings. None of this, though, means that some sort of copyright protection isn't essential:

YES, I HATE THE EFFECTS OF COPYRIGHT ON A DIGITAL REVOLUTION that heralds so much more than the banal ripping off of CD tracks. I hate that creativity is metered and parceled to its last ounce of profit. I hate that our technology is hobbled beyond its paper and other analog counterparts so that it permits us to view but not print, listen but not share, read once but not lend, consume but not create. But I can hate this situation without believing that the idea of copyright is fundamentally flawed. The framers' vision of intellectual property (then known as "monopolies") called for built-in limits to a creator's exclusive rights. A copyright term, for example, would expire even if a work still held commercial value.

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I pay my taxes. I have no idea how to calculate them, but I do what Turbotax tells me to. I'll pay a copyright tax, too, and willingly support artists whose work I appreciate, because it's the right thing to do and because it guarantees that more work will be made available to me. I'm not alone. So: Let's imagine a world in which Teddy Ruxpin can say whatever he wants, where kids can play with computers that are not digitally locked down, where bars and restaurants can stop measuring their TVs and their parking lots, and where amateur webcasters can create thousands of radio stations featuring songs we like, perhaps ones that sound familiar but that have new elements to them. We'll still buy concert tickets, books, and CDs and their digital descendants. They'll be competing with a lot more, though—created for fun, even if it happens to turn a profit.