Ya wanna know what I think? I think that intellectual property laws should be separated from copyright laws. "What the hell," you say, "that doesn't make any sense!!!" Well, here's what I mean. The author should have every right to be associated with his/her work forever, but copyright ownership should be mitigated to ten years after creation.

The US government, when it was drafting its first copyright laws, made it quite clear that copyright was an artificial creation. An artificial creation with good motives, of course; it was a set of guidelines to give an author a limited monopoly on their work so they could make money and, you know, eat sandwiches and live in a house and stuff. But intellectual property, in my opinion, is an inalienable right that should persist forever. How on earth can an author cease to have intellectual ownership of something? All of a sudden, after the copyright expires, they didn't create it?

That's why the artificial (but beneficial) law of copyright should be separated from the innate right of intellectual property. If that happened, I think the government would then be able to create laws that didn't allow copyright owners to abuse the system so much.

Just my two cents worth.