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Here's a revised version of my "ideal" copyright system. (Disclaimer: System described is not ideal.)

The point of this system is to recognize the fact that trying to legally prevent free redistribution of copyrighted works, given modern technology, is futile at best, and more often wasteful and destructive. Preventing others from selling copies is feasible, but preventing various and sundry individuals from redistributing them for free is not.

Let me know if I missed anything.

DOMAIN OF COPYRIGHT

Holding the copyright on a work would mean that you and you alone had the right to sell the work. However anyone could distribute copies of that work for free. They could not even charge materials costs or distribution costs, let alone try to make a profit. No one besides the copyright holder could distribute modified copies. The copyright holder could waive these rights in individual cases as they chose.

(The right of first sale would still exist, of course; you couldn't prevent someone from selling a copy they paid for, but no one except the copyright holder could make additional copies and sell those.)

DURATION OF COPYRIGHT

The duration of copyright in this system depends on whether the copyright holder receives any income for the work.

Copyright would be held at the creation of the work. As long as the work is not made available to the public, the copyright would last indefinitely.

When the work is made available to the public, then copyright lasts 70 years from that date OR until the death of the copyright holder plus twenty years, whichever is shorter. However this scheme only holds as long as the work is distributed for free.

As soon as the author receives any income for the work, the duration of copyright decreases to 20 years. (If less than 20 years remain on the copyright when income is first received, then the duration does not change. So you couldn't distribute the work for free for 69 years, then sell a copy, and get another 20 years. You'd still only have 1 year left.)

TRANSFER OF COPYRIGHT

Transferring or selling a copyright to another entity, be it human or corporation, would reduce any remaining copyright to twenty years, regardless of other status. (If the remaining copyright duration was less than twenty years, then nothing would change.)

In my opinion, the ideal model for the distribution of creative content is this: A creator creates the content (a writer writes a book, filmmakers make a movie, a musician records a song), then releases the content for free.

The public knows that creators have to eat, and so they know that if they like the work that a particular creator puts out, they should donate to that creator in order to encourage him, her, or them to continue producing things they like. If the creator doesn't receive enough donations due to his work, he may choose not to continue doing it (in favor of "regular" jobs). So it's in each reader/viewer/listener's interest to donate to the creators they like, since if they don't, there's a chance that those creators will decide it's not feasible to continue creating, and will stop, thus depriving the audience of further good artistic creations.

Karmically, you'd donate after experiencing a work, for as much as you think the work was worth to you. If you read Doctorow's new book and hated it, you'd probably donate nothing, and never again read one of his books. If you thought he had potential but didn't like this particular book, or simply wanted to reward him for his effort, you might donate a buck or two. Like the book reasonably well? Maybe five bucks. Think it's the greatest thing ever? The sky's the limit.

That's fundamentally it. The core idea is that since publically-disseminated information (like books, songs, and movies) cannot be controlled once published, fighting against it is wasteful and pointless. This isn't a new idea, nor is it originally my idea (I'm not positive but it's essentially a form of busking). Copyright was a nifty idea back when it was relatively difficult to copy large quantities of information like a book, movie, or song, but technology has changed and controlling it the way we do is no longer feasible.

There are practical issues, like the fact that some percentage of people will take in all the content they can without ever compensating the creators. But even they will eventually come to understand that if they don't contribute, and if enough people are like them, the creators will stop making their content. But we don't need laws to enforce this: it'll happen on its own. (And of course, creators could choose to sell copies of their works, if they wanted, in convenient formats; and I'm willing to bet that most people would still prefer to go to a store and buy a convenient copy of a movie or book or album, rather than dealing with getting a digital copy for free.)

It's a common enough meme to hear people say something like, "I'm proud to be an American." What does that mean, exactly? Let's ask Dictionary.com:

1. Feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one's stature or self-worth

There are other definitions, but that's the first one for "proud." Taking pride in the fact that you were born in a specific country seems like a bizarre thing, to me. It's more reasonable to take pride in your accomplishments: writing a book, raising a child, helping the homeless. But taking pride in an accident of your birth? Or an aspect of your physique or mind that you had no control over? Absurd. Sure, be happy or thankful that you were born to good parents in a peaceful country... but pride?

Then there's the other kind of pride:

4. Filled with or showing excessive self-esteem.

This is the kind of pride that prevents someone from admitting they're wrong about something, the kind of pride that causes people to make up outlandish excuses to justify some past behavior or belief. Everyone does it, even me. I've had arguments with my wife where I ended up claiming that I meant something besides what I really did, just so that I wouldn't have to admit to being wrong. (Usually, she manages to extract a confession from me anyway. ;))

This pride is the same thing that makes American politics (and probably most politics worldwide) such a complete debacle. Each side -- and there's usually more than two -- insists, insists that they and they alone have The Answers To Our Problems. With occasional exception, politicians and other social leaders will never publicly admit that they made a mistake, made a false claim, or were just plain wrong about something. The usual tack is to change what they're saying, without acknowledging that something they said last week runs directly contrary to what they're saying now. Just pretend you never said any of those things. Someone calls you on it? Talk around it, change the subject. If one of your policies goes into effect, two years later, you can claim that whatever problems were caused by it were actually caused by something else -- after all, so many other things happened in the past two years, who can say what the real cause is?

Never admit that you were wrong. Because being wrong is a sign of weakness, and how can you respect someone who has weakness? We even propagate it ourselves: having weak leaders is bad. So any leader with any weakness is bad. And I certainly wouldn't make a mistake like voting for someone who's weak, would I? Therefore the guy I voted for is strong! He has no weaknesses! He never does anything wrong!

Meanwhile, the guy I voted against, if he won... well, everything he does is wrong. Everything. He can't do anything right. He's a vicious, evil, greedy, misguided, insane, criminal sonofabitch. There's no way he could have any redeeming qualities -- because I wouldn't have ever made a mistake like voting against someone who is actually a good person. Therefore the guy I voted against must be evil!

Is this a conscious decision people make? Not usually. Most people don't really think about it. They don't delve into the reasons for why they do things. Imagine a world where people did thoroughly examine their beliefs, even only once in a while; a world where people would always admit that they were wrong, because nobody would laugh at them or mock them or insult them for being wrong. That's part of the problem. Pride is sometimes a defensive mechanism. If I don't admit to being wrong, then I don't open myself up to people criticizing me for being wrong. I can just pretend I'm not wrong -- in fact, they're the ones who are wrong, the ones who are insulting me for no reason (since I'm clearly right)!

But hey, that's just my opinion... I'm probably wrong. :)

From all the evidence I can find, religions in general seem to be a manifestation of man's desire for there to be answers to The Big Questions. Actual evidence for the supernatural claims religions make is completely lacking.

If someone comes to me and claims that God exists, my response is, "Prove it." It's the same response I'd give if someone came to me and said that space aliens were implanting chips in people's brains, or if someone said that increasing the number of miles of freeways in Los Angeles County would decrease traffic congestion, or if someone said that pyramid power can help you blah blah mystical-energy-cakes etc. I see no reason to believe things that have no evidence.

You know what evidence is? Arguments like, "But who else could have created all this beauty?" (while gesturing at a grand mountain vista, for example) are not evidence. Arguments like, "Well, we don't know what created the universe, so it must be God!" are not evidence. With that logic, you can claim that anything you don't yet have an answer for to be caused by anything you like. Evidence is quantifiable and physical; it can be scanned, detected, and analyzed. I can do repeatable, falsifiable tests on the theory of universal gravitation; I can do such tests on thermodynamic theory, hydrodynamic theory, mathematical theory, biological theory... but not, it seems, religion. And yet people want me to take as fact the idea that God exists. Come on.

Well, looks like it's time to trot this out again.

Copying is not the same as theft.

To some, this is fairly obvious. Others, however, are apparently capable of mentally equating the process of duplicating information with the process of depriving someone of possession of something. The distinction is simple, however, so I'll explain here. Again.

If I have a car, and you steal it, I no longer have the car.

If I have a CD, and you copy that CD, I still have the CD.

I haven't said anything about copyright or other forms of intellectual property law -- but they are all rooted in this distinction. If you're going to argue that these actions are equivalently bad, you should be able to justify that with some reasons why.