Well, the goal of copyright is to promote the progress of science (by which was meant 'knowledge') for our society. And while it dies have negative effects, if it can be tailored so that the good outweighs the bad, it seems worth having.

I'd generally agree with you, restricting copyright to only apply to uses by non-natural persons, and to commercial uses: if a company that owns a movie theater wants to perform a movie, let them have to pay for permission; if an individual just wants to download a movie to watch, why should they have to pay?

True, but thanks to the miracle of software, it only takes one person to crack the DRM. Then everyone just follows suit. Most people couldn't figure out how to break DeCSS on their own, but it's pretty easy to use a DVD ripping program.

No, first sale has always covered used book stores, video rental stores, and other for-profit enterprises. There is no expansion here. All the doctrine ever said was that the copyright holder has no right -- under copyright, at least -- to control distribution after the first one. There are a few caveats here and there (when lobbying groups got Congress to do their bidding), but that's basically it.

It's not a liberal / conservative split. Ginsburg is a fairly well known copyright maximalist. She wrote the majority opinion in Eldred too.

Speech is the right at issue. It includes both the right to say original things and to repeat verbatim things other people said first.

Yes, the Senate became very corrupt pretty quickly, with states more or less selling seats to the highest bidder. Directly electing them was meant to get Senators into office who would look out for the interests of the nation since the old method of appointments wasn't working.

Elections around these parts aren't perfect, but let's at least try to find all new ways of screwing things up instead of reverting to the tried and true ways. At least with experimentation we might get lucky.

They also should interpret federal law. This case wasn't a constitutional question, it was basically asking what the precise meaning of a statute was. Everyone seems to agree its a constitutional statute, though.

And they have a host of other duties. In fact, ironically, judicial review for constitutionality is not one of their enumerated responsibilities, and there was much dispute early on with the two political branches claiming that power for themselves.

Omega did get up to the Supreme Court, and got tied 4-4, which allowed the Circuit decision to stand but not as national precedent. Kagan refused herself for that once since she had been involved in it earlier. (Whose bright idea was it to nominate a Solicitor General?)

Of course, Congress does have the right to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, and would be well within its rights to limit or even prohibit the existence of corporate entities as it sees fit. And if it chose to abolish those which engaged in political speech, this would not run afoul of the First Amendment.

No, they could still do that, the only difference would be that they would be liable for the group as it would likely be a partnership.

I don't see a reason why we should extend the privilege of limited liability to politically active organizations. Let them choose which is more important to them.

Oh, you could still have a free press. It would just have to be organized as a sole proprietorship or as a partnership, without limited liability. American publishers worked that way for the 18th and probably much of the 19th centuries. It's viable.

Services isn't the only option. Patronage is another option, and if you can't find one big patron, try using kickstarter to find a thousand small ones. It may be difficult to get started as a new author, but that's true now, in a system where the publishers are effectively the patrons.

Purely as a matter of what rights you inherently hold as a human being, and what rights they inherently hold (whether as a corporate entity or a collection of people makes no difference), yes, you can.

But if we add in artificial rights which we, through the mechanism of a democratically elected government which holds legitimacy because we give it the power to govern, grant to the Times, then and only then do they have some power to stop you. But we can always take their power away, or change it, as it suits us; they only have what we ultimately choose to give them.

You can see this for yourself by printing up and selling copies of Shakespeare's works (we gave no power to him or his heirs) as well. The Times may act against you but the hard never will.

Well, copyright does value quantity over quality.

I don't think you're right, what with there having been quite a lot of music made and performed before it was copyrightable. But assuming you're right, people would either be okay with it or would willingly find a different way to encourage the creation of the music they want, including, perhaps, dialing copyright back up somewhat. I think it's a worthy experiment.

While that can conceivably happen, the general rule is that a compilation is a single work for the purposes of calculating statutory damages. The relevant statutory language is at the end of 17 USC 504(c)(1).