Copyright should be nullified if there’s no longer first party sales.
Then everything created before now will compete with new copyrighted creations.
In a lobbied environment such a thing can’t exist.
Probably some elaborations about what exclusive rights can and can’t be should have been put into US constitution (because US is the main source of this particular problem, though, of course, it’ll be defended by interested parties in many other countries), but that was written a bit earlier than even electric telegraphy became a thing.
They really couldn’t imagine trying to destroy\outlaw earlier better creations so that the garbage wouldn’t have competition. Printing industry back then did, of course, have weight in making laws, but not such an unbalanced one, because the middle class of that time wouldn’t consume as easily as in ours (one could visually differentiate members of that by normal shoes and clothes), and books were physical objects.
Yup, copyright wasn’t an issue because producing books was expensive enough to discourage copycats. The original copyright act I’m referring to was passed in 1790, which was actually passed a year before the Bill of Rights was ratified (you know, freedom of speech and all that). There was a lot of contention around the Bill of Rights, with many saying they were self-evident and didn’t need explicit protection, and I’m guessing the Copyright Act was similar in distinguishing what should be a regular law and what needs an amendment.
It was probably discussed in the constitutional convention, but probably dismissed since the constitution was intended to define and restrict government, not define what citizens can and cannot do. I think that’s the appropriate scope as well, I’m just sad that we’ve let the laws get away from us.
